ANBU Since Birth
by Yinko
Summary: What if Naruto had his mind forcibly matured at an early age, and directly after the sealing he was placed in ANBU HQ for six months to a year? He would view the ANBU as his home, and try to get back to them. Pragmatic:Naruto, Parents alive, Subtle:Naruto
1. At the HQ

**I don't own Naruto or his world and don't own quite a few of the core ideas presented. That proactively (as opposed to retroactively) applies to all future chapters of this story. **

_This story had a mix of influences. The basic premise is an idea I got from "The Empty Cage" by Rathanel, he uses it as an erroneous explanation by side characters for his protagonist's actions, while I am playing it straight. Basically, what if Naruto had his mind forcibly matured at an early age, and directly after the sealing he was placed in ANBU HQ for six months to a year? He would view the ANBU as his home, and try to get back to them. _

**ANBU Since Birth**

Minato Namikaze had just finished sealing half of the Kyuubi into his newborn son Naruto. He was actually rather proud of himself; he had, on the fly, come up with a way to survive the sealing by feeding half of the Kyuubi directly to the Shinigami in exchange for his own soul.

Just coming off his high Minato started to feel weak.

"What's happening? I thought you said I'd live."

The Shinigami just chuckled "Just because you survive doesn't mean you get away unharmed. You and your wife have suffered major chakra poisoning, your coils will _never _fully heal."

While true, being in close proximity to both the Kyuubi's and Shinigami's chakra had made it so that Minato and Kushina were injured, the Shinigami was the one that had made it debilitating.

Nodding in acceptance, Minato crawled over to Kushina and held Naruto towards her.

Picking him up Kushina saying "Naruto, this is your mother, I probably won't get a chance to see you grow up, so I have few things to say." Then she started coughing

"Don't be a picky eater…eat heartily…so you grow big and strong! Take a bath everyday…and keep warm. And don't stay up late, get enough sleep. And make friends, you don't need a lot. Respect your sensei and senpai at the Academy. Oh, and more one important thing. About the 3 ninja vices, be especially careful when lending and borrowing money… and save the money you earn from missions and don't drink until you're 20 and drinking so much it's bad for you… take it easy! And… as for women… I'm a woman and I don't understand, but anyway… there are only men and women… so you will feel yourself interested in women… but just don't fall for a strange one! Find a woman like your mom. And speaking of vices… one more thing… watch out… for Jiraya-sensei…!"

Then Minato turned Naruto to face him

"Naruto, listen to your motor-mouth mother." Everything else of importance having already been said.

Unfortunately for them, it was all meaningless since Naruto would never remember any of it.

As Minato started to collapse he saw his student Kakashi and Hiruzen Sarutobi rush up to him.

"This is Naruto, I want the village to know that he is the hero that keeps them all safe. I want them to know that he holds back the Kyuubi."

"It will be done as you say Minato" replied Hiruzen, already formulating the ramifications of such a move. The boy would have to be kept absolutely safe, right now he couldn't rely on the normal channels to find someone, the village had just been under attack not ten minutes ago. But where could he find a place to keep Naruto and raise him till he could find a good home? The hospital was out, with how flooded they were, they were more likely to lose Naruto in the system than anything else, same thing with the orphanage. The retirees were out, they had just fought the Kyuubi, most of those that had survived the Second Shinobi World War were now dead, and those that were left were in no condition to take care of a child. No, anonymity wasn't possible right now, now he needed overkill.

"Medics! Get the Fourth and his wife to a secure spot and begin administering treatment. ANBU! Spread the word, the Fourth is down, I am assuming command!"

"Hokage-Sama, what is going to happen to little Naruto-kun?" Said Kakashi.

"Come on, let's talk in, what recurringly seems to be, my office."

As they both appeared in the office with a burst of smoke and swirl of leaves, Sarutobi started by saying

"Unfortunately it will not be possible for you to adopt him, no wait hear me out" Hiruzen said, thinking that was Kakashi's intention "first you are very young, not even fifteen yet, but also people would ask _why_ you had adopted this child specifically, and then they would figure out who he is, and then they would never stop hunting him. So no I'm afraid I can't allow you to adopt Naruto-kun." Hiruzen sighed.

"So what will happen to him?"

"He will be taken to ANBU HQ till we can get this whole mess settled."

"Hokage-Sama…"

"Let me guess, you want to be inducted into ANBU to watch over him? Kakashi, you know that there is a sixth month probationary period to test for loyalty and mental stability, by that time Naruto may not even be living at HQ. Besides we have the village to clean up, and we need well known faces out on missions, showing that were are still strong enough to repel any opportunists."

"Hokage-Sama, I'd still like to do it, I don't think I can be a regular shinobi right now. Forming yet another team, making bonds with them and then being unable to do anything while they get hurt, and spending most of my time here in the village where there are nothing but bad memories for me here. I don't think I can do it right now, I'd much better be out in the field protecting the village that way, if I can." Kakashi, really never had any intention of adopting Naruto, he wasn't his godfather, and there was a bit of resentment lingering between his being the son of Kakashi's father figure and being physically associated with his sensei being incapacitated.

"Very well, you can start the probationary period in six months, if you still feel that way by then. That will give us a chance to stave off disaster, and with any luck, you will be in ANBU within a year."

"Thank you Hokage-Sama" and with that Kakashi shunshined out of the room.

"Now I just have to break the news to the council and make a public announcement about what happened. I'll have to do the council immediately, but the announcement will have to wait a few days."

**With the Kyuubi**

It had never been sealed in an infant before. The first girl had been an adult, the second almost an adolescent.

_"What a novel experience. I can see the way that the chakra coils are developing, it's all so different from the times I was sealed before. It was so sad to see the last two driven insane. After all, if they hadn't tried to take me in after their coils had developed, I wouldn't have been tortured for the last hundred years." _Thought the Kyuubi.

"_Hmmm. What's this?" _

Kyuubi watched as his youki, flowing through the young boy's chakra coils, started to react with Naruto's brain.

"_So, maybe he will turn insane at that." _Sighed the Kyuubi, resigned to another lifetime of senseless torture.

_"At least this time there won't be anybody to corrupt him with the 'love' nonsense." _

As Kyuubi continued to examine his jailor for the next couple of hours before he saw something that didn't make sense.

"_What is going on there? It looks like the youki is actually permeating the grey matter." _

_"Ah ha! Now I get it, my youki is driving his brain to achieve peak development. THAT'S why the last two were driven insane; their brains were already mostly developed, so they process started developing their brains around what was already the highest priority. And since Uzumaki women, famously, lack emotional control, it boosted their focus on emotional satisfaction until they didn't it didn't even occur to them that their actions didn't make sense. _

_"Looking at the rate it's going, there might be some negative side effects, I'm going to have to try and regulate this process, the development of memory, the visual cortex, the eyes, and the basics for analysis can keep going at the current accelerated rate, but some of the other areas relating to language, personality and social interaction will have to wait until there is a good set of role models or they'd be permanently stunted by developing in a social vacuum. Have to get the right neural patterns going before prioritizing them."_

Kyuubi thought for a moment.

_"I guess I should start hardwiring a path from his senses to my cage, otherwise it'll not only be boring, but I won't be able to tell how to alter the current development program if I can't see what's going on out there." _

**With Sarutobi**

It had been a _long _day, he had worked for the last 24 hours in the missions office, keeping work flowing through at a steady pace, regulating the village's recovery and helping moral by being seen to lead.

He remembered how the meeting with the council had gone

**_Flashback_**

"The Fourth managed to seal the Kyuubi-no-Kitsune at the cost of his life. Because of this I have re-assumed the position of Hokage."

There was an outcry at the first part, but it died down when he mentioned that he was once again in charge.

"What was the Kyuubi sealed into?" asked one of his councilors.

"A new born, Naruto Uzumaki, humans are the only thing capable of containing a tailed beast of that magnitude."

"Forgive me Hokage-Sama, but does that mean child lives?"

"Yes, and he must continue to live, if he dies then the Kyuubi will reform where he is buried after nine years." Sarutobi said before continuing

"Additionally, it was the last request of the Fourth that Uzumaki Naruto be seen as a hero for holding back the Kyuubi."

"One more thing Hokage-Sama, the clan name Uzumaki, are we to understand that he is the son of Kushina Uzumaki or another clan member?"

"No, that was something that was done in honor of the historical Uzumaki clan because of all they did to help contain the tailed beasts in the past." For those in the know the implication was clear, the container of the Kyuubi had been an Uzumaki for two generations, so the third generation would be an Uzumaki in name if not by birth.

**_Flashback End_**

_"What next? Could this day possible get any worse? Oh wait there comes another stack of papers."_ He thought sarcastically.

Out of the corner of his eye Sarutobi saw the head of the medic squad that had taken the Fourth and his wife away. Sarutobi beckoned him over.

"ANBU clear the room!"

The medic bowed "Hokage-Sama, I came to give you a status update of the two patients" carefully not saying who those patients were.

"Go on"

"The chakra poisoning is severe; both patients are currently in a coma. We could try to use invasive medical procedures to help speed it up the recovery, but with the amount of damage their coils have sustained their bodies might think that any sign of foreign chakra was yet another attack upon it and fight back; which would almost certainly kill them."

"So what is the long term plan?"

"While the patients are in a coma at the moment, there is no way of telling how long that will last. If they wake up and start trying to be active in _any_ way before their bodies are ready, it will kill them. I recommend a medically induced coma till their chakra coils can bleed off the corruption. Which, if my calculations are correct, will by about seven years."

"Damn, another seven years with this position, I had hoped to be retired for good" said Sarutobi.

"Oh no sir. That is seven years to get to the point that they can wake up and sustain basic medical procedures, there will have to be several years of rehabilitation on top of that, and even then it is highly doubtful that either of them will ever be at the same level they were at before."

"I don't have to tell you how sensitive this information it, so your team will be the only ones to deal with them until they are back on their feet. I want you put but a genjutsu seal on them, that wouldn't interact with their chakra just conceal their appearances, and give them a private room in the long term ward of the hospital."

"Why in the general hospital sir?"

"Hiding them in plain sight. Spies always try to ferret out unusual guard patterns that are used to protect hidden locations and sensitive items, but by placing them in an area that has standard guards and making your team responsible for that whole area we can make it legitimately seem like nothing interesting is going on there. And because of all the bloodlines in the village and the fact that so much can be determined by examining a shinobi's body, the hospital is already one of the most secure buildings in the village."

**General Perspective **

Naruto had been living in ANBU HQ for several months now. His memory had long since started being reliable; his first memory was of an ANBU team coming back from a mission, one man short.

"You just lost a team mate; in the past you've been told that this is worse than failing a mission, that the order of priority goes team then mission then self. In ANBU it's different, we're the janitors of the village, and the mission comes first. Just remember 'The mission is everything', and we got the mission done, so while yes it is sad, there is _nothing _to be ashamed of. "

With that the team all went off to mourn their fallen comrade.

Another memory that really stood out was when the ANBU commander gave a welcoming speech to a new batch of recruits, right after a chunin exam.

"…ANBU is like your family, not only your team mates, but the whole division is there for you because different teams often work together and if anybody on an operation is distracted or not working at peak proficiency the whole mission could end in failure."

Unknown to Naruto, the reason he could understand some of these things is that the Kyuubi was using what people said around him as a means of downloading language, social cues, and acceptable behavior into his mind. The Kyuubi couldn't download anything as complex as skills, he couldn't teach Naruto how to speak, walk or write and likewise he couldn't impart the meaning of a written character unless Naruto already know the spoken variant, but he could associate concepts and emotions with the things he perceived.

So it was that Naruto's first memory, was also where he got his first phrase, and at that age concepts that were reiterated like 'the mission comes first' 'the mission is everything' 'your pride is to always complete your mission' 'the mission is paramount' and 'ANBU is your family' became the founding concepts of his psyche.

Naruto's mind started to develop around values he saw at HQ like striving for perfection, because it will save the mission save your life and save those of your teammates. Or values like always being driven to succeed, being pragmatic (if it isn't useful don't do it), maintaining anonymity, and forming emotional attachments; form strong ones with your team, good ones with the division and a few strong connections outside of ANBU to keep your grounded, beyond that be prepared to have to kill anybody and always be aware that the life expectancy of those you care about and yourself is short.

Naruto also had trouble differentiating people by their faces. Humans usually learn from birth to look at faces and meet people's eyes in conversation in order to gain empathy, show respect, any number of things; Naruto had never learned these things. He had grown used to seeing everyone in ANBU masks that have obvious markings, when they walked around without the masks he had to try and figure out who they were based on height (difficult when you're a baby and everyone's a giant), gait, and coloration.

General consensus among his watchers was that Naruto was just an assignment, that isn't to say he didn't bond with them though. It probably didn't help that they encouraged his attempts at imitating them, ANBU are after all made up, primarily, out of no nonsense high achievers. When given a long term assignment to protect an infant who no one doubted would become a village shinobi, there's no reason not to push the kid from day one. During war time they kicked kids out on to the battlefield as young as five or six. Besides, the way the village was right now, war just might be on the horizon again, and if that happened they'd need their Jinchuriki out there fighting with them.

Naruto was routinely placed so he could watch the new recruits being broken in, since they were often the ones who got tasked to take care of his basic needs. It was because of this that he heard…

"If you fall short in your basic training you will be dropped from ANBU, if you fail to control your emotions you will be dropped from ANBU, if you fail to meet _everyone _with the proper level of respect and politeness you will be dropped from ANBU, if you are mentally unstable you will be dropped from ANBU."

The concept of being forced to leave his home and his family was terrifying, but his body still wasn't developed enough to do much more than babble and crawl.

He also got to observe a few basic instructions, he couldn't actually perform any justu since he couldn't mold or even manipulate chakra and hadn't done the mediation to find it, but he could remember the lectures about the basic techniques that they were supposed to know.

"This is the shadow clone jutsu, shadow clones are a solid construct that can be performed at risk by chunin level shinobi and safely by jounin, if you are going by the average chakra capacity per rank. They are used to get information in the field, they can do this because they are an alternative projection of your soul, in other words their knowledge and experience will feed back to you, it will do this automatically when they dispel, but due to the nature of these clones you can also gain that same information by choice. In ANBU we also use these to train certain things; even the weakest of you should be able to maintain one shadow clone for several hours, that is enough time to train taijutsu, kenjutsu, or shuriken-jutsu kata. Those with more chakra could use them to train chakra control or low level jutsu. This is a small part of the reason that ANBU are the best, we multiply our training resources. Now here is the hand sign."

Or

"This is the 'Hiding in shadow technique' this is a mainstay of ANBU since it allows, with chakra suppression, for us to hide in shadows. This is used during bodyguard work extensively, for instance Hokage-Sama's personal guard use this technique their entire shift. It is also used during infiltration and assassination missions to get through enemy territory, and for recon missions to hide and observe. Here are the hand signs."

Naruto tried to copy the hand signs, but with his tiny chubby hands he couldn't do more than make a fist! He could almost do monkey (hands laying on each other), dog (one hand resting on a fist) and he was getting closer to snake (fingers on both hands interlocked), but those were the simplest hand signs he'd seen.

Something that was repeated endlessly to the new recruits was that 'ANBU are thieves and assassins, they don't do combat' 'If you have to defend, you aren't fighting like ANBU' 'ANBU are subtle, so supplementary jutsu are good, but attack jutsu, i.e. most elemental jutsu, are too flashy for us'.

In all of this training the one thing that actually helped Naruto understand what chakra was, were the chakra suppression and sensing lesions. Which incidentally were the longest set of lesions the recruits had. It wasn't because the lecture meant all that much to him that Naruto was able to grasp what they mean, no it was because for several months half group would try to sense the area around them, and the other half would try to vanish from those senses. It allowed Naruto to _feel_ what chakra was like in an environment, as well as what the absence of it was like.

An unforeseen side effect of being able to understand those around him was that there was never a time when he hadn't known about the Kyuubi being inside of him, or the fact that everyone said his surname had been assigned to him.

**With Kyuubi**

Kyuubi was feeling a bit smug.

He had spent the last ten months working tirelessly to mold his container into the foundations of someone actually worthwhile, a true shinobi, not one of the tactless imitators that filled the villages today.

The brain development rate didn't really translate perfectly into normal child years, a bit like dog years in that respect. The development was much faster for the first several months, then started to slow down and would finally finish at a state of basic maturation, but with room still to grow. Kyuubi projected project completion on the brain would be when Naruto was three.

The process of helping Naruto out by forcibly associating concepts to help him learn was a bit tricky, but he was aided by the fact that Naruto didn't know it wasn't normal to have ideas and knowledge just pop up, so thus far he hadn't questioned it.

The social development was also impressive. Naruto not only imitated actions and behaviors but understood many of the ideas behind them and accepted those ideas implicitly.

Sure there were probably going to be some odd ramifications from this, but Kyuubi didn't care so long as Naruto was decently sane, or at least controlled, and didn't embarrass him by being one of these flashy 'neo-ninja'.

**General Perspective **

After ten months Konoha had managed to stave off total disaster and wind down from the constant rush to repair the village and their reputation. So the Hokage figured it was finally safe enough to move Naruto to the orphanage.

**With Sarutobi **

He walked into ANBU HQ, finally it was time to take him to the orphanage, sure he wished there were a better alternative, a loving family he could give Naruto to, unfortunately there wasn't, but any childhood would _surely_ be better than staying here.

He was met by the commander

"Here to collect our young charge are you?"

"Yes, anything to tell me about him before I take him?"

"Hmmm, it's hard to tell at that age, but possibly a bit brighter than most I'd say."

"That's good, we need more bright shinobi. What about his behavior here? Is he well-mannered, does he get to have any fun?"

"He's quiet, quick on the uptake. As for fun, this isn't a place for games, you know that."

"Yes, yes I do, but it doesn't hurt to ask how things are going."

"Here we are, he's just though there." The commander said as they came to the door.

Sarutobi walked up to Naruto

"Come here Naruto-kun, my name is Sarutobi Hiruzen, can you walk to me?"

Naruto thought for a moment while giving him a flat look, then toddled over.

Sarutobi picked him

"Well then, it's time to go now, I'm sure that you'll like it where we're going, there are lots of other children and people to play with you, and you can go outside."

Meanwhile, Naruto was wracking his brains trying to figure this out, go? Go where? To start with it couldn't be the medic or the barber, those were both done in house, then there was this guy holding him Sarutobi-san, he had never heard of him and he wasn't familiar, but the commander was deferential to him and that meant a high ranking outsider.

Sarutobi walked and walked, chattering to Naruto all the way about this and that, pointing out various landmarks and just generally showing enthusiasm. Till they came to the orphanage, where he met the matron at the gate.

Bowing low "Hokage-sama, I am at your service, anything I can do to help you."

"This is Naruto Uzumaki, he will me living here from now on." He replied while setting Naruto down.

"Yes of course Hokage-sama"

During their conversation though, Naruto was catatonic,

_"Living here from now on! This wasn't possible, the only way that could happen is if I got dropped from ANBU, that man is the Hokage, he has direct authority over all the regular forces but usually goes through the commander to deal with ANBU. So I got dropped and they called for him to come and pick me up to dump me with civilians as punishment for how unworthy I am._

_"What did I do wrong? Did I not try hard enough, did I lose control? Why did they drop me from the division? Maybe I'm on probation. Yes that must be it! That's why they had Hokage-Sama lead me to this place so they can watch my every move, they have me on probation until I show them that I have what it takes and can overcome whatever it was that got me kicked out in the first place." _

While Naruto was trying to work it all out in his head as he was led away to a dark basement room that had clearly been used for storage not long ago.

The matron said "We have to take you in and we have to feed you, but we don't have to do a single thing more for you, so get used to it."

After which she shut the door

Naruto's last thought before collapsing from emotional exhaustion was

_"I will earn my way back in, I must!"_

**AN: Having an insert character start training as an infant can be excused, and beginning training as an infant can work through flashbacks, but it takes a lot more work to explain it linearly and have it make sense. I mean, infants have bunched up muscles, low endurance, bad balance and poor flexibility. So without an adult helping him or an adult mind being able to understand how to force the body to do what it wants, it takes a lot of time and plot devices to make it all not seem ridiculous. **

**People have asked about clarifying what I mean by 'crazy' when it comes to Kushina. First, it's the Kyuubi's _opinion _that she's crazy. Second, she has zero impulse control added to rampant emotional outbursts, that is a massive personality disorder, many major personality disorders are labelled forms of insanity. Third, if she associates 'torture Kyuubi' and 'love' then she should be classified as yandere, and yandere are crazy. Fourth, I DO think that Minato would go for that, because I hate him. **


	2. Out of the orphanage

**ANBU Since Birth**

Naruto didn't get on with the children at the orphanage. They wanted to play, there was no purpose to play, play wasn't going to get him closer to his goal. They complained incessantly, complaining wasn't going to make their lives easier. Naruto viewed them as frivolous, they viewed him as weird, he was ok with that.

The matrons quite liked the situation, they didn't even have to show the children that they should alienate Naruto, it all happened by its self.

There were only two things Naruto liked about the orphanage, he had a lot of alone time to train what he could, and they had a library.

Actually, 'library' is stretching the word, what they had was introductory books to most subjects that someone would need through their first year at the academy, and a lot of introductory books for civilian trades, most academy students used their stipends to move out after a couple of years, but those that went to civilian schools tended to stay till they were twelve or even older. Because of this there were a lot more books on things that civilians found important than there were for shinobi activities.

So Naruto read mathematics, geometry, finance, the basics of several crafts from the civilian section, and the basics of throwing, how to stretch and exercise, how to train balance and taijutsu, chakra meditation and control, the fundamentals of stealth and emotional conditioning.

The matrons wouldn't have allowed him into the library, if they had known he went there. That had been one of the first things he had started doing when he arrived at the orphanage, covert reconnaissance, using it as a means of training stealth as much as he could.

**With Naruto **

As soon as he could he began doing chakra meditations, finding it, making it circulate, controlling it, bending it to his will. This led to the first meeting between Naruto and the Kyuubi. Fortunately, this was not really all that much of a surprise for either party.

During meditation he'd been drawn towards his center, following the spiraling pattern all the way in, until he'd found himself somewhere else. While obviously unique in design, the room was clearly modeled after his time at ANBU HQ, the only place he really had to base his mindscape after really. The mindscape might have belonged to him, but the giant cage certainly did not, it was made of gold and brightly illuminated, not something that would have come out of his subconscious in a million years.

"Greetings Naruto, welcome to my cell." Said the Kyuubi, knowing the value of a good first impression.

"Good morning Kyuubi-Sama, I apologize if my existence is inconveniencing you."

"Sama? No one has given me proper honorifics in three hundred years! And even back then, they were just trying to sucking up to me."

"You are a lord of demons, and as such deserve the honorific. Beyond that you are an elder, older than any man, such wisdom and experience is deserving of the proper respect."

"Ha! When you were an infant, I set about to turn you into the perfect shinobi avatar for myself, but I never expected that I'd get this lucky."

"Avatar? You wish for me to act as you would, given human form? Forgive me for saying so Kyuubi-Sama, but given what I know of your past, that does not mesh well with my future plans."

"No, no. All demon hosts represent their demons in the world, people associate the demon with the human, and so how the host acts affects the demon's reputation. And right now, as you so kindly mentioned, my reputation is in tatters."

"How do you mean?"

"Right now everyone in the world thinks that I am a mindless mass of wanton destruction and hate. They base this off of four things, first when I got involved in the fight at the valley of the end, second and third are your predecessors who blamed their horrible anger management issues on being my host, and fourth is this last attack on the village itself. Right?"

"Ok?"

"But what people don't know is that for both of the attacks I was controlled by an Uchiha. I mean think about it, sure I hate Konoha since everything bad that has happened to me for the last century has been their fault, but I am a kitsune I am not going to attack head on just smashing things with my tails and uncontrolled blasts of destruction, that's the way Uchiha fight, so that's how I fought when I was controlled by them.

"Though to be fair, my previous hosts were driven insane by my chakra and that is part of why they acted so poorly, but I made sure that the same thing won't happen to you so don't worry."

"I had wondered about the discrepancy between your actions and those of other kitsune, I had just assumed that it was because you were a demon with a form similar to that of a kitsune rather than a kitsune proper. So what would being your avatar entail?"

"Not just avatar, shinobi avatar. You only have experience with ANBU, so you might not really understand this, but most shinobi in the world are fakes."

"Fakes, Kyuubi-Sama?" Naruto asked

"What I mean is that they don't act like shinobi, they are soldiers, brawlers, demolishers, medics, bureaucrats, but very few are shinobi like your ANBU, like the shinobi of ages past. Hiding in the shadows, killing with the least possible effort or fuss, doing whatever was needed without complaint. Once chakra use became ubiquitous, the real ones just got lumped in with the imitators."

"So you want me to be a real shinobi, in other words, you are prepared to help me with my goal of getting back into ANBU."

_"Do I tell him the truth about that or not?"_ Thought the Kyuubi. "Yes, I'll do whatever I can to aid you in your goal (_He's too young to take the hit and keep on going just yet, in another year to two maybe) _I should probably tell you now thought, what I can teach you is limited. I can't perform human jutsu and you can't perform demonic ones, I've never had all that much use for martial arts even when in human form, but I have a good memory and can give advice based on watching others. Also I can advise you on your behavior, actions, choices and have a cunning and creative mind that can come up with solutions you might not."

"I look forward to learning from you Kyuubi-Sensei."

That meeting set the tone for all their future interactions, Naruto didn't really care that, given the option, Kyuubi would destroy Konoha, it simply wasn't relevant to his current situation.

**General Perspective **

Naruto's constant drive to succeed, lack of distractions and immediate feedback from the Kyuubi accelerated his learning curve, he'd probably have to wait six months to a year to start training in more of the physical aspects because his body simply wasn't ready, but in the meantime he could stretch and work on his coordination to shorten that timeframe as much as possible. He had been learning the chakra sensing and suppression that he'd witnessed the new recruits practicing at HQ, but Kyuubi introduced him to the 'Kyuubi Host's Special Technique', sensing intent. When Naruto asked why he should learn both if the intent sensing technique was so superior Kyuubi replied

"Redundancy, there are skills that can nullify youki, thus blocking your intent sensing skills, and there are skills that can get past sensors, but I know of no skill set that can do both at once."

On several occasions the Hokage came to visit him, these 'surprise inspections', as Naruto could only think of them, were incredibly stressful for him, he couldn't help but wonder "_if my body is in shape enough, if my chakra is even enough, if my emotions are controlled enough, if I am polite enough he might let me go back" _and then the inevitable disappointment when he didn't get transferred.

Then there were the little tests the Hokage would give him

**_Flashback _**

The Hokage walked into the orphanage yard and was immediately met by just who he came to see.

"Oh, good morning Naruto"

Naruto quickly jumped to the alert and bowed low

"Good morning Hokage-Sama"

Trying to break up the mood, Sarutobi said "You don't have to call me that, why don't you call me gramps?"

Naruto looked at him blankly but inside he was horrified "That would be improper Hokage-Sama"

"Ha ha, have you had any luck making friends with the other children since last time?"

"No sir. The others lack seriousness of purpose; forming emotional bonds with any of them would not provide any mutual benefit."

**_Flashback End _**

Eventually the visits became less frequent as the council took up more of the Hokage's time. Never the less such trials stripped him of his childish reliance on optimistic expectations, pushing him even further towards realism and pragmatism.

Naruto was kicked out of the orphanage when he was three.

"Come here boy, your leaving today. We've put up with you long enough, I've seen you can take care of yourself perfectly well, so you can take care of yourself somewhere else.

_"Leave? But if Hokage-Sama put me here on probation and now I'm being forced to leave. Then does that mean that I failed? That it's over? That I'll never get back?" _

Mistaking his look the matron said "Don't look at me like that! There are children in water country that would kill to live on our streets."

Still confused as to whether or not his dreams had been shattered he wandered out of the front gate.

Kyuubi seeing what was going on had to intervene

"Naruto wake up!"

"Kyuubi-Sama, what do I do? It's all over"

"Listen to me and do _exactly_ as I say. You aren't safe in this village right now, it's early morning but people will soon come out to start their days. Run to the nearest storm drain and climb in, you have to get out of sight right now, and the only way to do that without risking exposure is to get underground."

Still too out of it to think about what Kyuubi had just said, Naruto rushed to do as he was told. He ran around to corner and found a sewer entrance that he could just barely lift, with the Kyuubi helping, and climbed down, pulling the lid closed behind him.

"The sewers? How is this any better than the streets?"

"Not just the sewers, in Konoha the sewer system is tied into the tunnel network, there are bunkers and warehouses down here that have been forgotten for decades, they were much in use during the time of Mito Uzumaki my first host. Now pick a direction that looks to be going downwards and start walking and I'll answer any questions about what just happened.

"Am I out of the running to be in ANBU?"

"This is one of those hard truths" The Kyuubi began, but Naruto was already mentally preparing himself for rejection.

"The truth is, you were never in ANBU. It's something that you could have figured out yourself given time, but would probably have taken years to really question on your own. A lot of things from early childhood are like that."

Naruto's world rocked for a moment, he was prepared for one terrible utterance, but had gotten totally blindsided by another. He stopped walking and just stood there for several minutes. Finally he said

"I see"

"This is actually not all bad for you, you know. After all, it means you have a blank slate; you aren't a former member that has proven their way back in past charges of instability, incompetence, drunkenness or anything else, you can be like all the other ANBU hopefuls out there. It'll be much easier to get this way I'm sure." said the Kyuubi trying to motivate him again.

"That's true"

Finding a break of the tunnel leading downward Naruto started to pick up the pace.

"So what was all that about getting underground, why was it so urgent?"

"Naruto, I didn't expect to have to tell you this for a little while yet, but while you were relatively safe in the orphanage, you are not on the streets of Konoha. You see, you know one of my talents is that I can sense intent? I can tell you that if you walked in public up there would be beaten on a daily basis, starved and humiliated, all because they see you as a representation of me. It really wouldn't be possible to be just another face in the crowd; your looks are too unique and flashy to ever blend in. The village, from here on out is to be considered enemy territory."

"Yes Sensei! So what's the plan?"

"First we need to find a base, even if it's temporary, then we'll rest for the day and when night falls sneak up to the surface and break into the academy."

"The academy? why?"

"You can't spend the rest of your life as a mole, and you can't go above ground looking like you do. So we need to get the henge no jutsu, plus any others you can find but the henge is our priority."

"But won't people be able to sense a henge if I walk around a ninja village with one on?"

"No. A henge causes a temporary physical transformation, but the chakra that does it in inside of you and is your own. It would take an incredibly talented sensor, or a Hyuuga to tell if it was applied, and they don't go using those skills on the general public whenever they like."

He walked for several hours, taking random turns, occasionally the Kyuubi would suggest a specific route. Eventually they came to a chamber, only about three stories from the surface, that looked thoroughly abandoned, but at onetime must have been a bunker given the food, weapon caches and accommodations.

Naruto spent the remainder of that day cleaning, sorting through the place, placing basic traps at the various chokepoints and napping.

When night finally came he was ready for it, he made his way to the surface and crawled out of the drain as quietly as he could. He didn't know exactly where he was, but he did now that the city was originally designed in a semicircle with the major streets all radiating out from the Hokage monument and the academy was right near there.

Some people might think that the whole district around the Hokage tower would be heavily patrolled, except that the official shinobi buildings were designed to let intruders in and then trap them there, making it impossible to get out of again, so all the guards were on the inside.

Naruto didn't have any trouble on his way there, there weren't too many people out, and as of yet, they didn't know exactly what he looked like, while at the same time he kept his head down so they couldn't see his face.

When he got to the academy he only recognized it because of the sign, he decided to check the windows first, when none of them would open he went over to the trash and found a piece of wire that he used to jimmy open the latch on the window and climbed in.

The shinobi villages weren't too worried about people stealing from their academies, there was nothing all that unique to the village in there, and if a rival wanted to find out, all they needed to do was ask a spiteful academy dropout with a good memory. The only reason the villages put any restrictions on access for the basic three was so that not just any random civilian could get their hands on them. By restricting access they raised demand for shinobi work and increased the shinobi mystique.

He walked around checking classrooms, but he didn't find anything until he came to a storage room, inside they had basic jutsu scrolls, teaching aids and writing utensils. Quickly thinking it over, he decided that they might notice if too many scrolls went missing, using a pencil and paper he unrolled the first scroll and started copying down the relevant parts.

It only took him five hours to copy down the basic three, plus the additional chakra control exercises and look through all the teaching aids for any additional advice to help him with them. By the time he was done he had a serious cramp in his wrist, but there shouldn't be any solid evidence of his presence.

He left the way he had come, out the window. As he went he positioned the latch so that it was part of the way out, then closed the window and jimmied the latch closed again.

It was difficult to keep calm on the way back, it was seriously dark by now, being a little kid out alone at night would draw most people's attention and that would make people want to interfere with him. He decided to take a risk and go underground as soon as he could, then try to navigate his way back to where he came up by peeking up the drains. This safe, but time consuming, method took the rest of the night. When he finally got back to his base he was so tired that he almost set off his own traps. He collapsed on the bed and slept.

The next day got started on trying to do the henge, he could do it a little bit after only a couple of tries, but it took many more to get his imagination thorough enough to make it passable. When he got that down they started designing Naruto's look.

"…but Kyuubi-Sensei, shouldn't it look as average as possible so as to not attract attention?"

"Naruto you have much to learn, in a world that has the henge and is filled with shinobi, a perfectly average person is the first to attract attention. What you need is something that observers will write off, if they can associate you with something unrelated then you can use that to your advantage. That reminds me Naruto, while you were on your way to the academy you were walking behind a kunoichi out drinking"

"Oh, was I Sensei? I assume this has something to do with our current conversation."

"Yes, she had quite interesting features, dark red eyes, not like those Uchiha ones I described to you, pale skin and wavy black hair. Someone had asked her about it and she had said that it was a family characteristic she had gotten from her father, and that he had died during my attack on October 10th."

"I see, so you want me to take on some her features, and then use her father's death on my own birthday to explain away my existence in the village? Not a bad plan. Even if people do notice me they will write me off as the bastard son of a dead shinobi, and the fact that the family has lived here for at least two generations will make so that the features aren't totally unique to those who see them. Also, while those looks probably are quite striking on a young woman, they wouldn't be too odd of a boy, more understated than anything else."

"So pale skin tone instead of your oddly tanned one, two tone red eyes, lose the whiskers, black hair with a bit of curl at the end, and a thin build designed for speed and flexibility. Let me construct an image in your imagination so you know what to shoot for.

"Good, now we have to talk about your age, it'll be a problem. You are too young to go unnoticed by the public. What age we make the henge will depend on what we plan to do with it. Right now all you need to do is go to the library or the store without being bothered, during the middle of the day, so I think two years older should do it for now, you're three almost four now, so aim for about five."

So Naruto trained to perform that specific henge perfectly every time with the minimum possible chakra expenditure and waste.

**With Danzo**

He was reading over the reports when his lackey used a shunshin to enter the room

"Danzo-Sama"

"Yes, what it is?"

"The alarm went off in base eight, I was dispatched to investigate."

"and what did you find?"

"It seems that the Kyuubi jinchuriki has taken up residence there Danzo-Sama."

"The jinchuriki, wasn't he living at the orphanage?"

"I looked into it; it seems he was kicked out yesterday morning sir. There is one other thing."

"Oh?"

"It seems that he's taken an interest in learning the shinobi arts, he was practicing the leaf sticking exercise and the henge when I last saw him."

"Oho, it seems he is an early bloomer then. Did you see any other techniques lying around?"

"Yes sir, five in total"

"So enough for everything chakra based taught in the academy then. Keep a discrete eye on him, if he is serious in his training and goes beyond chakra basics into other fundamentals then we'll give him some aid."

"We're not planning to induct him into Root?"

"Of course not, the moment Sarutobi realized that the jinchuriki has gotten skilled when he wasn't looking he'll suspect us. If there is any trace of direct Root involvement he'll flatten us, so instead we'll be indirect. After all, a powerful jinchuriki is good for the village."

"Yes Danzo-Sama" said the lackey before leaving in another shunshin.

**With Naruto**

It took three days of effort to get the henge to a passable genin level, the transformation was perfect and the chakra use was acceptable. Of course he was aiming at a specific single image rather than using the skill fluidly so it was easier to perfect. When he finally got it down, the Kyuubi called Naruto into his mindscape.

"Now that you have the henge for your new look down we are going to make it flawless and undetectable. Your major problem right now is that your body is too young and frail to take any real training you want to give it. A little known fact about the henge is that, if used constantly for several months while a person is still growing, it will cause that person to actually look like the henge does. Only most kids can't pull this off. The only group that had this problem was prepubescent spies during the clan war period; they would wear a henge for sixteen hours during the day for months on end and then eventually found that they were stuck that way.

"The problem with this is that you can't use another henge on top of the one you are already using, you would have to disengage the first to use the second. So to get around this we'll use what is called a henge seal. Basically what it is, is a seal that makes a henge so much a part of you that sensors, the byakugan and the sharingan can't tell it's there, and you can use another henge on top of it. I know about the seal because Mito Uzumaki came up with it, taught it to her granddaughter Tsunade who talked about it with Kushina Uzumaki, so I got the information from two directions.

"The reason we're in your mindscape is that seals used on yourself, while generally placed on the skin, can be placed directly in the mindscape instead, and since we don't have any way to get a seal done on your skin we're doing it in here."

"Alright sensei, just tell me what to do. I can't wait to start doing more physically intensive training."

"Seals are just pattern of chakra flow that produces a matrix which in turn creates an effect, in essence 'jutsu on paper'. What you need to do is create two patterns on any wall in your mindscape out of your own chakra" The Kyuubi said creating an image of a pair of seals. "And then while doing that, will it to be absorbed into the wall the one on the left first, then the one on the right. Good."

As soon as the first seal had been activated a wave seemed to radiate, like something long restrained had snapped, then when the second activated he could feel the jutsu settle into place.

_"That felt odd, should applying a henge seal have really felt that strange? "_

Dismissing the thought, Naruto turned to the Kyuubi expectantly

"Kyuubi-Sama, I know that I am training to be strong so that I can achieve my dream, but won't I have to go through the normal procedures to get there? What about the academy?"

Putting his chin on his paws the Kyuubi thought for a moment

"Yes, you're right you will have to go to the academy. When you were there did you happen to see a schedule for the school year, like when it begins and when admissions end?"

"Hmmm. Sort of, there was a flyer in the lobby, looked like propaganda but it did have those dates printed on the cover. I think it was about four months till the start of term and two till the cut off. Even if I look five I'd still look a year younger than most of the new kids. On the other hand, I remember in the orphanage how some of them were saying that anyone could sign up but parents had first right of refusal which is why so many orphans went to academy as soon as they could pass the entry requirements."

"Do you know what those requirements are?" Asked the Kyuubi.

"No, I never bothered to find out at the time, but they can't be too arduous. Given the level of intelligence and dedication of most of those at the orphanage it's probably a physical exam rather than anything complex."

"You're probably correct. One thing to watch out for, if you want to remain undetected is how well you do in the academy. I understand that so called 'geniuses' take only one year to get through and are always at the top of their class at everything, if they want to get into ANBU nobody makes a fuss, but they are also like the public face of the organization. You, on the other hand, I think should take three years, and be near the middle of the class. What you excel at or not really depends on if you want _no _attention or only the right kind of attention."

"What kind of different scores do you think would get me different results?"

"If you want observant superiors to know you could do better but hid your skills, then be a perfect average with zero deviations. If you want to hide completely then be fairly average with some deviations. If you are aiming for a specific type of teacher and team when you graduate then be mostly average but with one or two areas that you show great skill with and a few areas that you intentionally fail. For instance you don't like flashy jutsu, so don't look like you are good at large scale stuff or elemental ones, instead show talent for skills that highlight what you want."

"I see what you mean. Do you think I'll have to change my name so I can remain undetected?"

"Well, when I was sensing for hostile intent yesterday morning, all the negativity was aimed at 'Kyuubi' 'Uzumaki' 'jinchuriki' and 'whisker marks', it seems that almost no one remembers your given name, or those that do don't harbor you any serious ill will. So if you register as just Naruto with no last name, not uncommon for an orphan who doesn't know his parentage, no one should notice you."

"That's no problem, I remember my ANBU guardians saying that Uzumaki wasn't even my real last name; that it was given to me as a title because all your other vessels had been Uzumaki before."

"I couldn't tell you I honestly have no knowledge of your parentage. I was sealed in Kushina Uzumaki before and had access to some of her memories, but since she mixed her 'love' and 'torture Kyuubi' together in all our interactions I always steered clear of any memories even remotely associated with that emotion. I don't know the names of any of her boyfriends, if she was married or even if she was pregnant (I was sealed in her soul not her body)."

"Anyway, that's more or less the next four months planned out, two months to get used to the new body, do the entrance exam, all while training in what we can get from the academy and the main library, and them start the academy in four months. Feels good to finally be back on track again."

"Fine, fine. For the next few days I want you to lay off the chakra use to let your body get used to the changes. Focus on physical activities and fundamental skills, go back to the academy and copy some more scrolls if you have to."

**AN: That part where Sarutobi asks Naruto to call him by a nickname and Naruto says that that would be improper, that was pretty much taken from Rathanel, but I changed it as much as possible to try and keep it from being straight plagiarism. I would have tried to do something else, but it was _perfect _for showing that he took the 'ANBU are always polite to everyone' thing to heart. This is mostly because I'm sick of Naruto calling the Hokage 'jiji' or Sasuke 'teme'. Even in fics where he is serious minded and the like, authors degrade their own characters by having Naruto lower himself with petty insults and calling people familiarly. **

**Those whiskers are a massive plot hole. **

**When I was writing how he was going to look, the first time I read it and said "Gah! I just described myself. This isn't a Self Insert." The second time I was going for a look similar to the Hozuki clan but then wondered why anyone would want to read worthless descriptions. So then I had the bright idea to make him look like a Yuhi, which does have plot implications later by the way. **


	3. Lots of Training

**ANBU Since Birth**

**With Danzo **

"Danzo-Sama, I kept an eye on the Jinchuriki as you requested, making sure to keep my distance. It seems he has perfected a disguise and is keeping a henge on at all times. Since that that time he has been focused entirely on fundamental skills, then after three days of that he added advanced leaf sticking exercises to his training time."

"Well, well, it seems that he intends to be a true shinobi rather than just focusing on flashing jutsu like most do. Gather some basic equipment, you know the thing, shinobi clothes, an assortment of weapons and a blade, then add in some books on mental conditioning, some more chakra control exercises, chakra theory, and the basics we ensure every root at genin level knows. Leave out any jutsu for now; I want to see what he does with we give him first. When you've got all that do a dead drop, make it look like someone was automatically dropping supplies without knowing that the location was 'abandoned', we don't want to scare him off."

"Yes sir"

**With Naruto **

He'd just come back from a run to the library, to look some things up, when he found a large package in the middle of his base.

Now anyone would obviously suspect a trap in a situation, especially if they were training to be a shinobi, so the first thing he did was stop where he was and check every step of the way for anything wrong, all the while using every sensing skill he had to figure out what was going on.

When he reached the package, fifteen minutes later, he attached wire to the case's lid and then hid behind a pillar while yanking the lid off with the wire. When no explosion happened, and no gas seemed to have been released you looked around the pillar and, just as cautiously as before, approached the case. Inside was everything he needed to get better but didn't have access to yet. He looked in and saw lots of scrolls and books, weapons, basic equipment, an outfit in dark neutral colors and a long knife, though of the right proportions that on him would work like a ninjato. Right on the top was an invoice, recording the annual supply drop.

Naruto thought to the Kyuubi

_"This is too convenient right? There is no way that this is a coincidence." _

_"This is obviously contrived, but so far we haven't seen anything that would suggest whoever did this meant any harm. The way it's arranged seems intended so as to put you at ease, of course they are assuming that you have the mental maturity and development appropriate for your age, which is most likely the only reason it didn't work." _

_"Well, no reason not to see if I can use these things then, best be wary of contact poison though." _

Just in case, he covered his hand with a piece of cloth torn from his shirt and used it to pick up one of the books, it looked to be on the importance of controlling your own emotions and how it was critical to both success in training and missions. Remembering the dead eyed stares of the 'battle mode' he used to see on some of the ANBU when they took their masks off, he could definitely see how that would be important. Next were texts on more advanced chakra control exercises, surface sticking and walker walking, he read that…

_"While most people are taught to begin by running, this is actually training a bad habit into them from the start. By running up a surface while trying to cling improvement is obvious since you can see how much further you have run each time. However, this teaches the student not only to output chakra at all times while running, but also a certain measure of imprecision with their chakra output, since they know roughly how much they need but don't know exactly. _

_The correct method to train this skill is to start out by placing your hand on the surface in question and releasing chakra through it while attempting to stick, when you have determined the _exact _amount required then you should lay down with your feet on the surface and attempt to walk slowly up it, with each step you should stop the flow of chakra _entirely _just before the foot is removed from the surface and start it again only when the foot is a quarter of an inch from impact. _

_The reason that the amount of chakra would be the same for you regardless of whether or not you are touching the surface with your hand or standing on it, is that the surface sticking method approximates a redirection of force to achieve its effect. This is similar to when you whirl a bucket of water over your head and the centrifugal force keeps the water from flowing out. As previously stated, the surface clinging technique approximates this effect. That is why when you use it you are not disoriented when you use it and you do not have to calculate the changes required in the chakra output caused by the effect of the added leverage your body achieves when holding itself horizontal to the ground." _

That seemed simple enough, then he read about water walking

_"Water walking is first best learned on a calm surface, most students learn more quickly if there is an intrinsic reason for them _not_ to fall in." _

"Where am I going to find a body of water I can train on while still being unobserved?"

Then he had a thought that made him a bit queasy.

"Well the book did say that I should want very badly not to fall in, and the sewer water is _right there_. I only hope Kyuubi-Sama can keep me from catching anything."

**Time Skip Four Months **

Hiruzen Sarutobi was having a pretty good day, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, the list of new academy students had just come in.

"What's this, some other orphan is named Naruto as well? Odd for such an eccentric name. Come to think of it, I haven't checked on Naruto in the last six months, I wonder how he's doing."

Taking out his crystal call he locked onto Naruto chakra signature, as the ball warmed up the image started to come in and he could see, an image of the same academy student whose picture he'd just been looking at!

"What the hell is going on?"

He could think of maybe a dozen possibilities, but most of them were too complex and involved to ever actually work. I mean, where would someone even find two dozen monkeys that nimble?

"I'll check with the orphanage first, then I'll know if I have to worry or not."

Wasting no time he used a shunshin to flash to the orphanage and immediately strode into the head matron's office. Standing up quickly she bowed low.

"Hokage-Sama, what an unexpected pleasure, is there anything I can help you with today?" She simpered

"I just came by to check on young Naruto-kun, how is he?"

She started to sweat a little

"Oh, yes him… Well you see the thing is that a few months ago he ran away, said something about living off the streets."

"Really?"

It was painfully obvious that the woman was lying; it didn't take a shinobi with over seventy years of experience to tell that. Releasing some killing intent he repeated

"Really? Now why don't you tell me the truth. What has happened to Naruto Uzumaki?"

She broke almost instantly, trying to lie to the man twice in a row would just be pushing her luck, best not to lose her head while she was at it, she thought.

"Four months ago I got word that we could get an increase in funding provided that Uzumaki-San was no longer living here, so I kicked him out."

"I see"

"What is going to happen to me Hokage-Sama? To the orphanage?"

"What you did was immoral; to kick a helpless orphan out on the streets, but many on the council would argue that you only did it to help out all the other orphans who live here. So my hands are more or less tied, you'll at most get a slap on the wrist."

Sarutobi left ultimately unsatisfied. Either Naruto was missing or he was at the academy, if he was missing, then why would someone go through the trouble of changing some child's chakra signature to match Naruto's and enroll him under his name? Was it all a distraction? If he wasn't missing then that meant that Naruto was _much _brighter than he'd anticipated, being able to get into the academy on his own, years before they'd normally accept him, using a henge that he must have taught himself. As for the reason, either he wanted to be a shinobi and figured that this was the most expedient route, or he was desperate for cash and was doing this to get an academy orphan stipend, or both.

Now the question was what to do. He could have Naruto called to his office after class to question him, but he had enemies and if it really was the real Naruto then bringing attention to the fact would put him right back in danger again. So the only option left was to keep an eye on him with his crystal ball, if he was the real Naruto then how he lived would explain why he hadn't heard anything about him in the last four months, and if he was a distraction than there should some evidence of who planted him and why.

**With Naruto **

He'd passed the first hurdle, he actually felt a bit proud of himself. Not for getting in, no that was easy, but downplaying himself so well.

**_Flashback Two Months _**

"This entrance exam will determine whether or not you have the basic aptitude to begin shinobi training. You all need to run around the training field five times in two minutes and do ten pushups, and when you're finished write your own name, though it doesn't have to be in kanji."

Even with his low expectations Naruto was still a bit disappointed, nothing about chakra, or being able to do basic sums or read?

For shinobi speed, strength and endurance, more than being about muscular development was about how you used your chakra in your muscles and how much you had, the reason people wore weights and the like was so that the chakra flow in their muscles would acclimatize to the weight. As such, Naruto far outstripped everyone else there, or would have if he hadn't been seriously holding back.

Though to be fair Naruto was not a good comparison, he could read, write, was good at math and knew the village history. He had about three years of the academy curriculum all wrapped up right there. He had an experienced genin's control over his chakra, had pretty much mastered the henge, at least to an extent that most other shinobi would consider it mastered, he intended to take it further. It had taken a while but he had learned the bunshin, he figured that if he hadn't learned exactly how much chakra it took now, then in a few years he would have become practically impossible to do, but now that he had figured out the proper ratio with would be simple to accommodate for his growing reserves.

He had almost mastered the basics of the three combat forms taijutsu, kenjutsu and shuriken jutsu.

This all seemed more impressive than it really was. He'd been working pieces of each skill for the last three years. Then suddenly he gets a body that can handle what he wants to give it, some much needed resources and a lack of matrons or other children trying to spy on him. Of course his training leapfrogged.

All in all it seemed he would have to play a role at the academy.

**_End Flashback _**

Since then he'd started to take a look at his earliest memories, trying to see if he could make a leap from what he knew now to what he'd heard then. The Kage Bunshin sounded promising, he did remember the warning about chakra expenditure but he'd asked the Kyuubi and he'd said that right now he had enough chakra to make at around seven at once, but that the number would soon increase because until he left adolescence his chakra would grow enormously every year. Actually the risks were pretty straight forward and easy to calculate, all it was, was **(chakra reserves-jutsu expenditure*number of clones)/number of clones = chakra in each body** and if that final figure was lower than what it took you keep you alive then you died.

He did have to ask one question though

"Kyuubi-Sensei, what did the teacher mean when he said that shadow clones were an _'alternative projection of your soul'_?"

"Did you know that some shinobi can turn themselves into water? And others can sink into the earth and move through it at lightning speeds? Well the reason they can do this and still be alive has to do with the way that chakra relates to your soul and your body. Your body can be broken down into a lot of yang chakra and yin chakra, all matter can, it has to do with energy conversion. Anyway, yin chakra comes mostly from your soul and in the body is used to keep the physical chakra in the right order. So when a shinobi turns their bodies into other substances they are actually turning their physical chakra, their yang chakra into elemental chakra and then using the pattern set by the yin chakra to recreate it later, usually not even using the same matter as before. In the same way, when you create a shadow clone you are using your yin chakra to copy how you look and how your body and mind should operate, in effect a 'soul projection', and then using the yang chakra to make it a physical reality."

"If that's the case then why don't Iryonin use a similar system to rebuild damaged bodies to how their yin chakra expects them to be, rather than using medical jutsu?"

"While that is theoretically possible to do on yourself, and indeed shinobi who can turn into elements do use a similar system, it is something that could really only be done to oneself. Applying to another person _might_ be possible but it would be a godlike ability. It takes years of training and an extreme amount of talent to become a good Iryonin it would probably take several times both of those to be able to do what you are suggesting. At the end of the day medics are there to keep the largest margin of combat able people in field as possible."

Based off of what he had heard in the past and has learned recently it only took him fifteen minutes to start getting positive results, thirty to actually be successful.

Using the Kage Bunshin training method obviously accelerated his progress considerably; he perfected his basic skills, eliminated the flaws in this jutsu and began experimenting with the Kawarimi.

He'd discovered that while the more the mass and size of an object differed from that of his body the greater the chakra cost, but that distance did not affect it what so ever. To test this he has Kage Bunshin go to the opposite end of town and used a kawarimi on it, instantly replacing it without even a puff of smoke, it just looked like his image went out of focus for an instant. Then he switched back and dispelled the bunshin. What this effectively meant was that so long as he could get a bunshin somewhere, or knew the exact relative position of an item that he could switch with in an area, then he could go wherever he liked, in the world.

With that done he turned his focus on more advanced skills, such as turning his fundamental combat abilities into specialized martial arts, and figuring out the Hiding in Shadows Technique. He knew what he wanted from his taijutsu, kenjutsu and shuriken jutsu; speed, flexibility and precision. Speed so that he could end the fight instantly, precision so that he hit only the most vital areas and flexibility so that he could avoid any counter attacks. Power was mostly an afterthought, sure it's nice to have, but didn't really suit the style of combat he was aiming for.

He had looked through various texts about fighting styles in both the main library and the academy one, and had come up two that he thought would augment each other well. First was the Hebi style taught by Orochimaru during his time as a researcher in Konoha, it was focused on speed flexibility and precision, just as he wanted, but wasn't all that deadly, it focused on soft tissue strikes to incapacitate rather than kill. The other was the Iryonin style; it used the chakra scalpel technique as a weapon to turn near misses into deadly hits. He figured that he could combine the two to create a style that did exactly what he wanted.

After looking into it he discovered that he could get the Iryonin style from where they trained medics, down the road from the hospital, and a copy of the scroll for the Hebi style was at the Ninja Tools Research Facility since they had asked for a copy to see if it could be combined with some of their inventions to make them more practical, it couldn't.

Sneaking in to make a copy of each wasn't very difficult; they were hardly even considered government buildings.

When he read the scrolls he discovered to his disappointment that the Hebi style was, in practice, more concerned with sadistically playing with your opponent, and the Iryonin more about doing as little harm as possible to your opponent while incapacitating them. Still he figured if he could learn the movements of the Hebi style and the application of the chakra scalpels then he'd have his style right there. So even though he didn't particularly like either style by itself he got to work learning both.

While this was going on he had made good headway with the Hiding in Shadows Technique, it turned out to be a mix of genjutsu and ninjutsu, you couldn't actually dissolve into an absence of something, and it wasn't at all like he'd heard the Nara techniques were. In the end it was the common bunshin that held the answer. It was an illusion that was technically classed as a ninjutsu, because you were manipulating light to create an image rather than people's minds to see an image that wasn't there. In the same way the hiding in shadows technique manipulated light so that people couldn't see what was right in front of them, when added to chakra suppression, odor elimination and silencing jutsu it made a shinobi almost totally undetectable.

For his shuriken jutsu he had three options that he could focus on; shuriken, kunai and senbon. Each had their own problems, shuriken and kunai were both noisy for one. Oh, no civilian would ever hear them but to an experienced shinobi they easily loud enough to hear coming. Most people used kunai over shuriken because, while harder to throw, they had a longer blade meaning that if you hit, it would be more deadly, senbon on the other hand required great skill to use effectively. All three of the weapons tended to flash in the sunlight at the most inconvenient of times. But the only one that matched his emphasis on subtly and stealth was the senbon, and with his studies of the Hebi style and the Iryonin style he already had a good idea on where to aim. Then to eliminate its weaknesses he planned to chemically bathe them to make it so that they wouldn't reflect, and then use poison to eliminate the risk of missing the vital areas.

As for a sword style, he'd looked and looked, but hadn't found anything that fit the bill. The styles out of Kiri were too eccentric and were all for giant blades. The styles out of Iron were very straight forward; all skill, no cunning. The styles from Kumo, while the closest he'd seen, actually being shinobi styles, but were meant for front line fighters, just a step up from how Kiri swordsmen fought.

Since he'd first found the supply drop in his base Naruto had been periodically sensing to see if anyone else was in the tunnels and paying attention to the area around where he was. About once every week he'd get a spike from the same general area, it was only when he had gotten shadow clones down that he'd been able to triangulate how to get to that spot. Once he had, he timed his move for shortly before whoever it was would get there, and acted. He used a bunshin to leave a carefully worded note in the room the Root agent had been using to observe him and then had it dispel.

When the Root agent showed up moments later he could instantly tell that someone had just been there, it wasn't hard the dust as still hadn't settled. He was a little surprised when he saw the note stuck to the monitor. Wary for seals he read it

_"Dear observer I hereby request for additional supplies consisting of the following_

_-Scroll for Shunshin no Jutsu _

_-ANBU Recruit standard information packed (regulation, instruction manuals, essential supplementary jutsu)_

_-A kenjutsu style complimentary to the combat methods I am developing. "_

He sighed, he'd have to take this to Danzo-Sama, why couldn't today be another boring day.

When he did get to Danzo's office the agent knelt and offered the note to him. He quickly read it, understanding immediately who had written it.

"Not an unreasonable request, if he were a new chunin and not an academy student. The shunshin we can do, that's no problem and he could easily have gotten it from somewhere else if he wanted. The ANBU packet… you did say that he learned the hiding in shadows technique yes? Putting all this together with his level of determination it's clear that he is aiming to be in ANBU and wants a head start, for someone who has shown initiative in the past, I think that we can accommodate him there as well. Now this last request, a kenjutsu style, what do you know about that?"

"Sir, I know that his fighting style is based on assassination tactics; clean, efficient, mostly one hit kills but with skills on the side in case someone intercepts his first strike. I also have seen that he has looked into a great many well-known sword styles and probably wouldn't be asking if he'd found one that worked for him."

"He probably doesn't know that the ANBU packet contains a ninjato style, it's pretty well rounded though. There's also the 'assassination technique' style that we use. If we gave both to him, given what you say, he'd likely combine them to make a style that worked better with what he has. That, and the fact that very few have seen the assassination technique and lived, would help hide our hand is in this."

After thinking about it for a few more moments he said

"Very well, you have my permission to provide all these things to the Jinchuriki."

The agent hesitated before saying

"Yes sir"

"You have some reservations?"

"I'm simply concerned that we are giving him a great many resources before he has proven his loyalty. What if he runs?"

"It wouldn't matter if he did turn nukenin. With the treaties in place all the major villages… and Taki, are obliged to surrender any foreign Jinchuriki they get their hands on. Why do you think we gave the Sanbi back to Kiri during the Third Shinobi World War, after they tried to use it to destroy the village? We didn't really have a choice. Besides he's been a good investment for the village so far.

**With Naruto**

Naruto had left his note in the morning and then had left to go to class. Some might wonder why he didn't just send a clone to class instead, there were two reasons, first shadow clones were too fragile to be at all reliable, especially when you were pretending to be weaker than you were, and second they took life less seriously so there was a risk that they might destroy the great fiction he'd been creating. When he got back he found three books and eight scrolls waiting for him.

The books contained the ANBU rules, regulations and expectations for behavior, everything that all ANBU members were expected to know, it wasn't everything that made an ANBU but it helped bring some of Naruto's idea's for the future down to earth and give him a solid model from which to work from when paired with his memories of they actually behaved, his people.

The scrolls contained two kenjutsu styles, the Body Elimination Technique, Sensing system pass technique, Empty Cicada Shell Technique, Time Reversal Technique interrogation genjutsu, shunshin technique, and the scent removal technique.

Of the six jutsu three of them could be used, in one way or another, in battle; shunshin, scent removal and empty cicada shell (which made it so that you could throw your voice and have it be heard coming from multiple directions). The body elimination technique was a suicide jutsu used to keep your body away from those who might investigate it for village secrets. The sensing systems pass was a way of getting through the barrier around the village without being noticed and the time reversal technique was a way to get better information out of willing subjects.

Using the time reversal technique on himself and having clones ask the questions he got better results on comparing the texts on rules and expectations with observed behavior. He found out from his memories of the most experienced people which rules were life and death verses being just of situational importance, or simply carry overs from the general forces.

He started learning both sword styles, the standard ANBU style was too well rounded, it was designed for all ANBU no matter what their specialty, and the 'assassination technique' was too aggressive, it used a series of short rapid slashes to rush the opponent, never letting up. As Danzo had predicted, he intended to dissect each and recombine them into a complimentary whole.

Shunshin was useful but had some serious problems. It was a short range high speed movement technique. It generally could be used dozens of times with a range of around a hundred feet, and as a one off at a range of a couple of miles. So it couldn't be easily used for traveling. The problem was that the moment the technique was activated a chakra spike happened at both the start and finish point, and then you moved between in the most efficient manner possible, if a path didn't exist then you couldn't do it. Now if an enemy shinobi was skilled enough to sense this spike and fast enough to act then he could block your initial strike or even get the drop on you. With time and practice you could make that spike almost non-existent but with his advanced knowledge of the kawarimi, which didn't have those weaknesses, it was not yet a priority, at least not compared to perfecting his other skills.

Even with shadow clones running at all hours it took a bit of time to get all his skills at a level he and the Kyuubi found acceptable. It was only then that the Kyuubi called him into his mindscape to talk to him.

"Naruto now that you have the appropriate skill there is something you need to decide."

This got Naruto's attention right away.

"Did you know that all the great summoners got their contracts early in their career? Do you know why that is?"

"Is it that they had longer to create their reputation?"

"In part, but this applies to those who had a long career and started very young as well as it does to those who had a short career and started late. The answer is that they got their summons before they had put the finishing touches on their fighting style. Most people get their contract late in their career and they use them as either a trump card or a gimmick since they don't know how to incorporate them into the way they fight."

"That makes sense, so you want me to decide whether or not to get a summoning contract?"

"Yes, if you chose to do so then I have the perfect contract for you."

"Oh?"

Now Naruto looked interested

"Yes, the Chameleon contract, though that is actually a misnomer, they look nothing like chameleons. It'd probably be better to call them 'illusion lizards' or something, but every summoning clan must have a name that corresponds to a specific mundane animal, regardless of how poorly it might apply. It's part of the rules."

"So based off of what you've said, they are focused on genjutsu and other illusory skills. I can see that working."

"Yes, though that's not all they do. The chameleons work best as stealth scouts and spies, killing by surprise using traps. They never engage face to face and they rarely show their real appearance in the field. There is just one problem though."

"Oh, and what is that?"

"The chameleon contract is currently guarded inside the belly of the Chameleon boss summon Shiromari who has taken the form of the Kubisaki castle, he has been there for the last fifty years or so. Mito Uzumaki heard about it but didn't recognize Shiromari's pattern like I did. He always does this, when his summoner dies he sits around, luring people into his belly, till a new summoner comes along to claim the scroll.

"Once inside he will try to distract you and scare you, after that he will try to kill you. Once you make it clear you know what he really is he will stop playing games, so you have to be fast and cunning. The only way to get through alive is to sign the contract and perform the summoning jutsu that will take both of you back to the summon's realm."

"I see the advantage of having scouts and spies like that, and I wouldn't mind testing my skills at this point, but I always thought there was more to being a summoner than just having unique partners."

"Sorry, I thought you knew. Each summoning clan has a unique set of skills that they will only teach their summoner, the more advanced the skills the more trusted the summoner has to be in order to be taught them. As for what the chameleon clan's unique skills are, I haven't a clue, I never interacted with one of the summoners they trusted enough to teach so I to find out. But given their own talents, it probably has to do with illusions, traps and stealth. Additionally most clans have a sort of secret technique that only the highest echelons know how to do. I know that the Toads and Snakes have sage mode, the Slugs have the ability to break apart into miniature versions of themselves (I don't think a human has ever learned that), the Monkeys have the ability to turn into mystical weapons, and on and on."

"So basically, useful partners plus a complimentary skill set that no one living has ever seen or knows how to fight against. That's worth it."

**AN: The Kawarimi idea comes from Orpheus Kidwell. Some of the surface clinging ideas were seconded from other authors, a lot of it was my own. **


	4. First Summons, First Kill

**ANBU Since Birth **

The next morning, bright and early, he went to the edge of the barrier and created a team of six clones. He had them henge so that no one would know they weren't a team of genin on a minor escort mission and used the sensing system pass technique on them.

Unfortunately Neck country, where Kubisaki castle was located, wasn't even on the mainland. It was on a large island off the coast, his team would have to run all the way to Noodle country and then water walk from island to island, circumventing Water country in the process. The good thing was that Neck was on the coast and was an absolutely tiny country. Either way, he could expect it to take a couple of days for his team to get there.

It took two day, during which he was fairly distracted by making sure that his clones where making good time and hadn't been dispelled by some random accident. Finally they came in sight of the castle and signaled that they were ready. He grabbed a small vial and filled it with his blood, the wound healing instantly, then he created two clones, one two use on the return trip and the second incase the first one tripped and popped itself.

Just before he was ready to leave the Kyuubi said

"Remember, this is basically your first mission, the first time that it's actually life or death out there, the first time going beyond the walls of the village. You need to be in battle mode, no emotion, total concentration. I can't help you, a voice constantly talking at you would distract you and probably get you killed, let alone the possibility of creating a mental crutch. You'll be on your own, just remember all you've learned and represent me well to the summoning realms."

Naruto said "I will Kyuubi-Sama" before his face went blank and he activated the kawarimi.

When he showed up at the so called 'broken neck pass' the first thing he did was to replace his clones and have his new team henge into a bunch of civilian teenagers. Then he suppressed his chakra and his intent while melting into the shadows.

The 'teens' quickly ran off acting boisterous, the boys talking about how one or another of the others 'were too scared to go in there' and the like, while the girls whispered amongst themselves and occasionally giggled. During this the real Naruto was hidden inside the group.

His theory was that, first Shiromari didn't want people to know that he was a summon and not a possessed castle, so he'd hide that fact until he could trap and devour people in small groups, second Shiromari had limited senses, he might be able to see inside himself, he could almost certainly feel where people were standing, and he might be able to sense chakra. With Naruto hiding inside a group of other people and being as stealthy as possible Shiromari probably would be unable to sense him as anything other than a slight aberration, an abnormality.

The group got to the gates which opened by themselves letting them into the foyer. The group started to meander randomly around the castle for half an hour, occasionally one of them would stumble off, or someone would scream at a moving portrait. They would all whisper and throw out bullshit ideas about what they thought was going on, one side pushing the 'haunted house' angle, another, the 'ninjas did it' angle.

Naruto could sense Shiromari's chakra all centered around the scroll in the castle tower, if it wasn't for how rare it was to find good sensors he'd have been disappointed. The group as a whole headed upwards till they were almost to the top before Naruto gave the signal to have them all split up, he figured that by now Shiromari was getting frustrated by not being able to devour his prey, so by having a large group go in random directions he would be thoroughly preoccupied while Naruto made his way to the scroll.

The fleshy tentacles and stomach acid Shiromari used to as his main internal defense really wasn't a match for Naruto who could cut through the first and walk over the second. When he unrolled the scroll he found eight names already signed in blood. He took out the vial of blood he'd filled earlier and going as fast as he could signed his name, did the five hand seals of the summoning technique, splashed some blood on his hand and slammed it on the ground while releasing a short powerful burst of chakra.

Suddenly there was white everywhere as the world disappeared in a giant puff of smoke, everything cleared up and he found himself in a place he didn't recognize. Everything looked larger than they should, the mountains, the plants, the lizards, and there was an unnatural haze around the place that made it easy to lose your way.

"So you want to be our new summoner huh. If you had used a direct approach or been caught at any point I would have killed you now. You did well, better than most of our previous summoners really. "

"Thank you Shiromari-Sama"

"My title is 'Chameleon Boss Summon Shiromari', but you can call me Shiromari-San or just Boss in a pinch. Those who deserve that honorific are the elders; I just take care of the daily running of the clan and the choosing of the summoner, nothing more."

"Yes sir"

"I see you were a bit disappointed by how easy it was for you to sign the scroll. What you have to remember is that we chameleons are not good fighters, and beyond that, my stomach is a worse attacker than I am, generally I just wait for people to dissolve rather than actually targeting them. To be perfectly honest, I am not a good representation of the chameleon clan, I'm the boss because I'm too big to do the kind of work we normally do so they let me do large buildings instead and put me in charge of administration. That and the fact that most clans and summoners expect a gigantic boss summon led me to be named the boss, I'm really more of a figurehead since all of my authority comes from the elders."

"Thank you sir, that was very informative. Is there anything further required of me to finalize our contract?"

"Not technically no, but you should probably be introduced to everybody, or at least the elder. Why, do you have someplace you need to be?"

"Yes, I made this trip covertly, the longer I'm away from my village the more chance there is that something could go wrong and my disappearance will be discovered. However, I do think that I have enough time to give my respects to the elders of the clan."

The fact that he had done all that under a time constraint and was keeping his attempt at getting a contract a secret from his own village spoke volumes to Shiromari, greatly impressing him.

"Ah wonderful, come along."

As he led Naruto along a path to meet the elders Shiromari asked.

"Thinking back on it, I got curious about something. You must have known from the first that I was the castle and that the scroll was inside of me. But as far as I know no one has lived to tell the tale in living memory, how did you know?"

"Kyuubi-Sama told me."

"The Kyuubi?" Shiromari asked shocked.

"Yes, he is sealed within me. It was he who recommended your summoning clan to me as being most complimentary to my skill set, and it was he who instructed me as to your modus operandi when testing potential summoners."

"Kyuubi huh, I haven't thought of him in years. He was pretty cool when I was young, but then he got this reputation for having a nasty temper and wrecking everything up, not good."

"Yes, he knows about the state of his reputation is in and is attempting to use me to help repair it. He wishes for me to be a 'true shinobi' and use that to validate his, I suppose you would say, sanity to the world. This is something that I currently have no problem assisting him with as becoming such a shinobi would closely align with my own aims as well. "

"A true shinobi, they started to become pretty rare once the villages were founded and the clans chose loyalty to their nations. Before that there were no large shinobi wars because only the samurai were concerned about border incursions. After that most young shinobi were trained for open combat in the style of Madara and Hashirama and the true shinobi, who finds more use in peace time than war, fell out of favor."

Their talk petered out as they came to what was clearly a ceremonial area, there was a small lizard there, an extremely old looking lizard.

"This is elder Tokagemari"

Naruto bowed and waited to be addressed.

"So this is supposed to be our new summoner? How old is he, aren't humans usually bigger than this?"

"I am currently four years old Tokagemari-Sama, though I have used a technique that has made my body mature faster than normal."

"Oho, so young and yet you overcame Shiromari. Tell me who were your teachers? They should be congratulated to make so strong at your age."

"I have had only one teacher sir."

He let the anticipation build for a moment, the elder leaning forward on his seat.

"Sensei is none other than the Kyuubi no Kitsune."

You could have heard a pin drop. Then with mirth in his voice the elder broke the silence.

"I should have known it would be a demon. Though, why would he be teaching you?"

"Kyuubi-Sama wants his old reputation back, he wants to repair what Konoha has done to him. The truth is that he was forced to attack like a rabid fox due to the actions of the Uchiha clan, and was then horribly treated and misrepresented by the Uzumaki clan. By training me he hopes that I can show that he is not mindless and not geared towards pure unadulterated destruction."

"So he's made you his avatar? A wise move on his part from what I've seen."

The elder thought for a moment.

"Do you know why we summons need summoners? What it is that we get out of it?"

"It never occurred to me to ask, I always just took it for granted."

"Most do, but there is a reason. You see, a long time ago a human with great power came to us in a time when what are now the summoning the clans were at war with each other. All of our populations were low. He convinced us that in order to stave off total destruction of all the clans, that we should adopt a social system he had devised. The way it works is that we use human summoners as our representatives, our avatars, to raise or lower the standing of the whole clan.

"A string of good summoners will push a clan to the top, a string of incompetents will drive them to the bottom. That's why the clans are so picky. In choosing they try to pick people who will be good representatives for them, the monkeys look for intelligence, the snakes for sadism to ward off their predators, and the toads are so into their drug fueled, bullshit prophecies that they only pick the flavor of the month, the newest 'prophecy child'. In exchange for this service you provide, we act as your partners in whatever way we can.

"That's why a clan can go so long without a summoner, so long as we are idle, the clans with an active summoner will go up, and might lower out status by a single level, or go down and raise us by as much, but if we choose badly in our own summoner then we could go down many more level in social status as a result. It isn't so bad to just stagnate… until we look over and see that our old enemies are now doing better than us. The bastards."

"I see, so it's a similar situation as I have the Kyuubi-Sama already then? You train me to represent you, I then do well in my shinobi career and in return your clan becomes more successful. I see no problems with this at the moment. Who are your rival summoning clans?"

"The hawks are one of them. They stand out for having chosen to take a cumulative affect in the social system by being totally indiscriminate in who summons them. I mean, there are probably a couple dozen people who can summon hawks and eagles in the shinobi world at any given moment. They figure that there is a greater chance of someone being average, with their help above average, so that they slowly increase their standing while mitigating the effects of the really bad summoners. The snakes are also our enemies, but most clans aren't all that friendly with each other since we used to all be trying to completely wipe out all the others."

"The current snake summoner is Orochimaru, I have no problems with interfering with his plans. If he were removed then it would take them many decades to find someone so universally feared and hated."

Shiromari decided to use this moment to speak up

"Excuse me elder, but our new summoner has expressed a desire to become a shinobi like those of old. You are the only one of us who was alive when they were commonplace, how would we accommodate that and how would it affect him being our summoner?"

"In the past the chameleon clan has always won through subterfuge and assassination. I see no reason that his goals and our skills need not already intersect."

"Indeed Tokagemari-Sama, it was for that very reason that Kyuubi-Sama recommended your clan to me. It was his belief that your clan would work best for me and that by contracting with your clan at a young age, early in my career, you could train me to work together with you as effectively as possible."

"Oh it was more than that young summoner, by providing us with a suitable candidate he has created a group of credible witnesses as to his state of mind, and also puts us in his debt. This move was calculated to accelerate the improvement of his reputation among the summoning clans."

"Even if that is so Tokagemari-Sama. I would ask that you keep the identity of your summoner as 'Kyuubi Jinchuriki' as secret until I reveal it to my village."

"You are keeping an ace up your sleeve for later. When you do intend to inform your village of this?"

"When I have no other choice. Once the secret is out I may summon you freely, until then I will have to contain myself to just the skills you can teach me."

"A wise plan. When you don't have the strength to fight your enemies, don't let them know that you are gaining allies."

"Forgive me elder but I must get back before I am missed."

"Oh, of course. What village is it? It must be near the broken neck pass to get there without being noticed."

"Konohagakure no Sato"

"What! So far, how did you make such good time? I'm assuming you made good time if no has yet noticed that you are gone."

"I sent a team of solid clones on ahead of me and then used them to teleport me there. I intended to do the same for the return trip."

"Yes, I think we can certainly accommodate that."

When he got back to his underground base the Kyuubi said

"Well done, you got the contract and the clan accepted you, all in all a successful mission."

"Yes, it'd probably rank as consecutive C ranked missions if the village had assigned them to me."

"There are really just two more things I advise you do before graduating. How quickly you do them and in which order is entirely up to you. They aren't skills, rather they're experiences that help hone your mind better for your given profession"

Now he had Naruto's attention; skills and jutsu were important, but in many battles it was your experience and your mindset what would determine survival. The Kyuubi went on

"I want you to go out of the village, find a group of bandits and kill them. Getting your first kill in a controlled environment is important, and I want you to find a way to get trained to resist torture."

"The first is likely simple enough, but I think that I'd need the help of our new friends to achieve the second."

"That's fine, don't go rushing off just yet. You should give yourself downtime for rest and training between missions, that way you'll be less likely to make mistakes and more able to correct any problems you might have noticed in previous missions."

Over the next month Naruto integrated the chameleon clan's unique skill set into his repertoire. The chameleons taught him their variation of espionage, stealth, the proper uses of fear, genjutsu and assassination. A lot of the information was just the condensed experiences of the clan, but there were also ways of manipulating chakra that made the application of jutsu which fooled the senses much easier. It simply took time to properly apply them since they had been devised by a species that didn't think exactly like humans did.

While he was doing this Naruto also started sending out clones into the forests of Fire country, trying to find where bandits tended to be found. He discovered that they were most often around side roads and tributary trade routes. Places where there would be a decent amount of reward for their time but not as likely for the merchants to be rich enough to hire shinobi.

When he'd felt that he'd had enough sitting around he decided to move. Activating the sensing systems pass technique he flashed through the barrier without anyone the wiser. As he ran he created a dozen clones each running off to check likely areas. It took about forty five minutes to get a response, one of his clones had spotted a group of five bandits around a camp fire. He used kawarimi to appear there instantly, his eyes already analyzing everything he could about his targets.

One was quite large, heavy set with a beard and scarred face, he had an axe at his side; he was a heavy hitter may be fast with linear blows but didn't have the agility to keep up with Naruto's size or fighting style. The next three were thin, obviously in this for the food, they were using old tools for weapons, he guessed that they would be clumsy fighters. The last one was athletic with clear muscular definition; he had some old kunai on his belt, probably an academy dropout judging from his chakra.

Naruto had his clones dispel and recreated them where he was, then while he disappeared into the shadows, they all created a ring of traps around the camp. It was only half an hour before one of the scrawny looking ones excused himself to take a piss, Naruto followed him and while the man's back was turned, rose out of the his shadow and slit his throat. He didn't get to make a sound.

Lowering the body to the ground he moved back to the camp, looking to see which of the bandits looked the most tired or drunk, the 'academy dropout' seemed to have commandeered most of their alcohol from the last raid and was drinking himself silly. Picking his next target he chose a senbon coated with just a simple contact anesthetic and threw it at the man's back. Between the alcohol and the anesthetic it felt like a bug bite as it pierced through his heart. To his companions it looked like he'd had too much to drink and passed out, falling over in the process.

Now that he'd evened the odds considerably he had to act fast before the others realized that one man was dead and the other hadn't returned. Raising out of the shadow of the largest man he pulled out his blade, lined it up with his target, and promptly tripped over a tree root. The blade pierced through the large man's lung instead. He'd still die, but it would be painful, drawn out. Rolling out of his fall Naruto drew two senbon and threw them at the other two bandits, killing them instantly, then he looked down at the dying man and finished him off. He'd have time to be embarrassed over his mistake later, at the moment he was in battle mode, he didn't have time for such things. That's when he heard it, the crying.

How had he missed this? A kidnapped girl was in a tent, she's seen him kill the bandits. She looked up at him

"Oh thank you Shinobi-San, thank you for killing them. If you would cut my bindings I can lead you to the nearest village where they will pay you handsomely for this."

She was naturally quite surprised when her head left he body, sailed through the air and landed among the other corpses.

After all, it was bad policy to have witnesses to a covert operation, and since he didn't want this to get back to Konoha just yet, that's exactly what it was.

He set about having his clones take down the traps and deal with the bodies. It simply wouldn't do for people to find the scene and start asking questions.

When he got back to Konoha the Kyuubi spoke up.

"Naruto we need to have a talk about what you did wrong during the mission."

Dropping his emotionless mask he sighed

"I know sensei, I can't believe I did that poorly."

"It's good that you recognize your own mistakes, can you figure out what all of them were?"

"I think so. First I didn't do a large area scan to determine if there was anyone else there besides the targets, because of this I almost missed a witness who could have blown my cover. Next was that when I cut the first man's throat, there was a risk he could have made a lot of noise thrashing and gurgling, when a more silent method could have worked just as well. Third was that when I killed the second man I relied on the fact that he'd fall backwards instead of forwards, if he hadn't then he would have fallen into the fire and the bleeding wound on his back would have been exposed. Fourth, I was too focused on the third man and wasn't watching where I was walking, resulting in a sloppy kill that ended quite noisily."

"All correct, and this is why I wanted you get do this now. You need to get used to applying what you know in high stress situations. You were so focused on eliminating the target that you didn't relax and remember your training. Now I'm slightly surprised that you didn't ask about killing the girl, most people would be concerned about that; she was, after all, an innocent."

"She was a risk to the integrity of the mission, and the mission always comes first. Even if I knew of a jutsu to seal away those memories or had sensed her beforehand and taken the time to knock her out, there is the possibility that she could have led others to that scene in time to find evidence of who did it. They could potentially find out my weight, height, which hand I favor, they might find a trace of hair, or with skill and time be able to track their way back to the walls of Konoha. Only time and the elements will remove all of that, there was really no other choice from the very beginning, this way no one will find the bodies and the mission is a success."

"It's good that you understand that, it's something that most people struggle with."

And then the Kyuubi thought about Naruto's past, he'd based his social expectations around a group of consummate professionals, then when he was moved to the orphanage and decided that most people were useless he'd adopted an 'us and them' mentality, where the people who he considered worthless or wasn't ordered to protect were all expendable. Once he'd had a chance to think about it, the Kyuubi wasn't all that surprised any more, outside of a mission if Naruto had seen that girl in some sort of trouble he _might _of helped her, if it seemed worthwhile in some way, but she was an active threat to both him and the mission so long as she lived, of course he'd killed her.

After that incident Naruto went on several more small excursions in order to correct any mistakes, and to convince himself that, that level of tenseness was a one off thing. He'd been trying to find a way to do the other thing the Kyuubi had requested of him, but he'd run into a problem.

The only place he could get torture resistance training was from the T&I department, and in order to get them to do it he had to have coded orders from the office of Shinobi Administration in the Hokage's tower. In order to get an order like that he'd have to get an un-coded sample, a weekly codebook and get the orders stamped.

This is why it was so nice to have the chameleons on his side. The office issued that set of order a couple dozen times a year, and they had to be re-typed every time to coincide with the newest codes, so they had un-coded copies on file. It was just a matter of sending a summon in to take a look at it and copy it.

It was almost the end of his first year at the academy so he waited for the start of the year end break to make his move, using the same system as before he used his chameleon summons to find out the weekly code and created a copy of the set of orders he wanted using it. Then he used the chameleon's shape-shifting abilities to make the orders look like a form for withdrawing from the orphan stipend, but with the place for the authorization stamp and his name left unchanged.

He walked into the office of Shinobi Administration the perfect image of a little boy on an errand. He jumped up on the chair in front of the desk and tossed the paper on the table.

Reading it the office worker said

"It says here that you are requesting to be removed from the orphan stipend. Is that right?"

"Yes mam"

"And why is that?"

"I just got adopted mam, my new parents said that I had to come here and give you that in person."

"And quite right they are. If you had neglected to do so for two months you would have been kicked out of the academy for using special funding under false pretenses. Your new parents must be very supportive of your desire to be a shinobi, your very lucky young man."

"Oh yeah I know. A lot of kids at the orphanage never get adopted at all. I thought I was going to one of them for a while."

She smiled and stamped the paper.

"Here you go, now you remember where you used to pick up your stipend checks? Well, you just need to give this to them at then desk right around the corner from there."

"Thanks lady!" Naruto yelled as he ran out the door.

As he walked out of the Hokage tower the façade seemed to melt away leaving him acting as he normally did.

"Step one complete"

**AN: For broken neck pass, I watched that episode of the anime, it really would be ****_that _****easy for someone competent with inside information to get the scroll. **

**I've only read a couple of plausible excuses for why the clans have human summoners. I think one of them was that they use human blood and chakra as a means of reproduction and the other one was that it was orders from kami. **

**During the fight scene I wanted to show that, while he's been heavily trained, he lacks experience. Killing an innocent is just a sign of his professionalism, he simply doesn't care who she is. He cares that she is a witness. **


	5. Torturous Surprises

**ANBU Since Birth **

Ibiki Morino was having a pretty uneventful day. He had taken over the position of head of T&I from Yamanaka Inoichi, the clan head of the Yamanaka clan, when the man's daughter had been born server years before. He liked his job. This was where Konoha dumped their sadists, the people who liked to use pain and suffering to break people's minds down and wring out every drop of information, and he was the best of the bunch.

He looked up from his paper work when one of his subordinates came in

"Sir, we have a weird one, you'd better come see."

Weird? You saw all sorts come through here; the mere fact that one of _his_ men called this person 'weird' was enough to get his attention.

His subordinate lead him to the reception desk, they didn't have enough visitors for a receptionist but there was a bell that would call someone nearby who would, in turn, find out what you needed. Once there he saw a little kid waiting for him. He couldn't have been older than seven, just starting the academy probably, what on earth was someone like that doing in a place like this?

"Yes, can I help you with something young man?"

The child took out a piece of paper and a laminated ID card and wordlessly handed them over. He looked down and read; orders to subject '***No Surname*, Naruto: Academy Student**' to a three week 'interrogation acclimation intensive'. Then he looked at the ID card, academy student, just out of his first year, name Naruto, there was his picture. Fuck.

Ibiki couldn't even imagine the kind of enemies the kid must have to get this to happen. Did someone discover that he was the lost heir to an old enemy of theirs and set him up to have his mind broken? Was he outperforming another kid in class with a vindictive parent on the council? Whatever the case he _really _didn't want to do this.

"Kid, do you know what these orders are?"

"Yes sir, they are directives stating that I am to be given black-ops level conditioning against torture." The child replied coolly.

"You know we might be able to lessen the, umm, intensity of the course for you."

"I believe that would defeat the intended purpose sir."

"You do know what this means right, I'm going to be putting you in enormous amounts of pain, I'm going to destroy your willpower. You will probably not walk out of here the same person you were before. This course is one of the main reasons that so many ANBU hopefuls don't make it."

"I am aware of all of that sir. However, I believe that those orders are quite specific, and I intend to see them carried out to the letter, and since classes start back up in just a little over three weeks I suggest we get started immediately, as I don't want to be marked absent."

"Don't say I didn't try to help you out later."

"I am perfectly aware that you have done what was needed to clear you conscience so far."

Ibiki turned to his subordinate

"I'm going to be taking this one over personally, it needs to be handled with... care."

"Sure thing"

"Oh, and call Anko, I'll need an assistant and this will be a good lesion for her."

A fifteen year old Anko skipped into the interrogation room, a stick of dango hanging out of her mouth, and saw her mentor Ibiki standing in front of a little boy strapped to a chair.

"Yo, what's with the kid, we doing tours now?"

Ibiki said "No" before handing her the orders.

"What seriously, they want us to torture this kid for the next three weeks?"

Ibiki nodded

"Condition him, but essentially you are correct."

"Are there also orders to send the tapes to some sick fuck to get his jollies off? Cause that's the only reason I can think of that he'd even be here."

"I was actually thinking it was part of a revenge scheme." Ibiki mumbled

"Come on boss, I'd understand it if he were a spy, or an enemy shinobi. But he hasn't even done anything wrong, as far as we know."

Naruto decided enough was enough

"Excuse me miss, but if I'm not complaining then I don't think that you really should. It's unprofessional you know."

The dango stick dropped out of Anko's mouth in shock

"What are you a masochist or something? This isn't a game kid."

"I am well aware of that miss."

"You know what you're getting into and you actually want to go through with this?"

"I have no qualms about my current situation."

"Alright kid, your funeral. Let's get started."

What most people don't know is that human nerves can only transmit so much pain before the system overloads. That's why good interrogators don't use methods that are purely painful to get through to their victims; most people have already gone past that limit at one point or another in their lives and don't even know it.

While pain may not be enough, the mind does balk at fear though; not fear of pain or even death necessarily, but fear of mutilation, fear of helplessness, fear of a slow lingering demise. That kind of fear actually increases your perception of the pain associated with it, not the pain itself. This fear is triggered purely by the subconscious. You may _know_ that they won't permanently cripple you or accidently kill you, and you may know that there's a medic right around the corner in case they go too far, but your body doesn't and it's your body that you have to overcome.

In order to make this whole process more effective at getting information though, interrogators will break down a person's will power by shaming them and dehumanizing them. They give them just the bare essentials to survive, make them live in their own filth; they do everything they can to wear a person down in between questionings so that when the time comes they'll spill their guts.

That was what they did to Naruto.

To start off with Ibiki punched him, hard, on the side of his face. When all he got was a grunt of pain, he was a little reassured; when he saw the mark instantly disappear he was impressed. He'd get to see how far that healing factor went before long, but no matter how powerful it was it would lessen the risk of accidental death. Then he saw that kid had a blank face on, no emotion, staring straight forward. That was good; he'd already had some emotional conditioning, if he was good and could stick to that all the way through he'd be all the stronger for it.

Then they started getting serious, building up, first ensuring that his pain threshold wouldn't be a problem, and then they started getting him used to the fear and the deprivation of his humanity.

Most people who got acclimation training were chunin and jounin, they had focused more on their work then there mental state. If they had given any thought to their mental state at all, it would have been so they could get along better with their team mates. People at their level were expected to give up some information under interrogation, giving a little that doesn't matter and then stick to that, repeating it over and over again, it helps them get through it all. People in ANBU knew that no piece of information was meaningless to the right enemy. Your name? That could tell them what clan or family you were from. Your Shinobi registration number? If they have a spy, and you always assume they have a spy, then they could look up almost every relevant fact about you and your skills. What village you're from? Not if you're doing something your village can't claim credit for, not if you're not wearing any identifying markers. At that level they were expected to not say anything.

Naruto hadn't had that same training, instead he'd learned the use of fear and how to resist it from his summons, he'd been taught since birth to control his emotions and he'd received books on mental conditioning from Root; the organization who expected their members to commit suicide upon capture. It was with that level of dedication to his goal that got Naruto through it all, the knowledge that to be on the same level he had to go through the same trials making him keep his mouth shut.

The Kyuubi couldn't interfere; it would ruin it for Naruto if he talked to him during the process. He had to take everything they dished out, all the mental and physical abuse, so that he'd know how to take even worse.

At the end of three weeks Naruto didn't know how long he'd been there but it felt like forever. Nothing mattered anymore, the only thing he could cling to was the mission, yes this was a mission and it was all the mattered, nothing else, he had to complete it, _had to_, his mind could no longer grasp an alternative.

And then it was over, suddenly there was light, and medical attention, and showers and clothes, and he was told it was all over, he'd passed.

When he left he looked like he was carved from a block of wood, it would take a while to get back into a more normal frame of mind for him. Right now he just wanted his sensei to tell his he'd done a good job and then fall asleep for a thousand years, but he had class next week so he could only manage five days at most.

**With Sarutobi **

The Hokage was doing his job, he was leaning back in his chair reading his favorite orange book while a team of helper monkeys did his paper work. When the Hokage said that a trained monkey could do his job, he knew what he was talking about.

Suddenly the door slammed open, causing the monkey summons to instantly puff away, and the Hokage to curse and hide his book. In the doorway was Ibiki Morino, with a paper in his hand and a look of thunder on his face.

"Normally I'd send this file to his commanding officer with a note to take notice of his mental state for the next few months, but I'm afraid I don't know the procedure for doing so for an academy student."

His voice dripped with sarcasm as he slammed the file on the Hokage's desk.

"I think it would be better for everyone if you started at the beginning and told me what's wrong Ibiki-kun."

Sarutobi tried using his calm grandfatherly voice; that always calmed people down when tensions were high.

Sighing Ibiki sat down

"Three weeks ago an academy student, couldn't have been more than seven, walks into the T&I department with orders from _this_ building that he was to be conditioned against torture of the highest level."

Sarutobi's look morphed from confusion to anger

"And what did you do?"

"First I checked the authorization stamp, it checked out, and you know how much effort we spent making sure that those things are impossible to fake, plus having all the staff check for concealing genjutsu. Next I tried to talk him into smudging the details a bit, make it the same length of time but less intensive. He wouldn't hear of it, he insisted that the orders be carried out to the letter. So in the end I did it personally, to make sure that everything went smoothly. In fact he left my office this morning; he never broke, never said a word, really remarkable for a kid his age."

Sarutobi agreed, that was impressive. He flipped open the file to read the report, and stopped cold, it was Naruto. How did this happen, had someone on the council finally figured out who he was? Was this Danzo's work, trying to make a better 'tool for the betterment of Konoha'? He had to find out, he had to talk to Naruto, there was no point trying to hide it, if someone had already connected the face with the name then it was already too late for that.

Swiveling over to his crystal ball he locked onto Naruto's signal and brought it into focus, it seemed he had left the sewers to go for a grocery run.

"ANBU! I want this boy brought here immediately."

Two of his guards momentarily appeared in a bow before disappearing again in a puff of smoke.

**With Naruto **

He'd been planning to sleep, but for some reason he just couldn't relax enough. So instead he'd gone out to get food. He hadn't quite made it to the store when he was stopped by two ANBU.

"Naruto-San, the Hokage wants to talk to you."

Then they took him by the shoulders and as swiftly as they had come, were gone.

All three showed up in the middle of the Hokage's office, the two ANBU returned to their posts and Naruto saw Ibiki standing against a wall.

_"Ah, it seems the jig is up Kyuubi-Sama" _

_"They're going to ask you how you got assigned that training, and there isn't anyone you can lay the blame on that will hold up against close scrutiny. At the very least a few of your secrets are going to come to the light over this." _

"Naruto-kun, it's so good to see you again. Come call me gramps like you used to."

"That would be improper Hokage-Sama." Naruto replied while bowing.

Laughing, the Hokage relaxed, he'd responded correctly, it was the real Naruto.

"So I see here that you just got through being conditioned against various interrogation techniques. That's quite impressive."

"Thank you Hokage-Sama"

"There is one slight anomaly though; it isn't supposed to be given to people below the rank of chunin."

Naruto remained silent

"Would you tell me who gave you these instructions?"

"Yes Hokage-Sama."

"And who was it?"

"No one Hokage-Sama."

"Then where did you get them?"

"I made them Hokage-Sama. Those orders were forged."

Sarutobi and Ibiki looked at Naruto sharply

"So you're saying that _you_ forged these orders. Orders that we ensure are impossible to forge, and you did this all that you could undergo some of the worst treatment imaginable for three weeks. Forgive me if I find that hard to believe."

"Never the less it is the truth."

"Then how did you accomplish this *cough* forgery, and why?"

"I used my summons to accomplish most of it sir. As for why; I was informed that it was an important step in my training that would help me to achieve the correct mindset while performing in my chosen profession."

"You are claiming to be in possession of a summoning contract?

"Yes Hokage-Sama, I am in possession of a summoning contract, specifically the chameleon contract."

Sarutobi quickly went through the hand signs for the summoning jutsu to bring out a small monkey.

"Can you tell me who the summoner of the chameleon clan currently is?"

"No great summoner, that clan has only recently come out of a fifty year stagnation and have not yet revealed to us the identity of their summoner. But they did boast that he was younger than any other summoner in existence and that he had bested their boss in battle alone, and passed the bosses test while behaving like an upstanding member of the chameleon clan should. Not that that is much of a compliment, the chameleons are all deceitful, sneaky little freaks."

"Thank you for that information, in light of this I will allow you to prove your statement Naruto."

"Thank you Hokage-Sama"

Naruto flashed through the hand seals, bit his thumb and summoned a good sized lizard.

"Naruto that is clearly not a chameleon, I don't know what kind of lizard it is but I know what a chameleon looks like."

He was interrupted by his summon though

"Chameleon filth, aren't you ashamed that your boss got defeated by a child?"

"Stupid monkey, go back to throwing filth like the rest of your kind."

Naruto and Sarutobi both dispelled their summons before a fight broke out in the office.

"Or maybe I'm wrong."

"No need to apologize Hokage-sama. I am told that, in this case, the name is not truly representative of their clan, but that since no earthly animal exist for which they correspond, they have chosen the name 'chameleon' as the closest fit."

"I see. Now you said that you used your summons to forge these orders, and that you did so because you learned that it was important for your training. Could you tell me exactly how you forged these orders and where you learned that it was important that you should put yourself through all this?"

"Of course Hokage-Sama. I used my summons to obtain an un-coded copy of the required paper and a weekly code book. I recreated the orders using the correct code and had one of my summons use a unique henge variant to cover the majority of the paper, making it look like a submission for withdrawing from the orphan stipend. Then posing as a recently adopted orphan I visited the office of Shinobi Administration down the hall and had the paper officially stamped. While she did check for genjutsu, she didn't know that that kind of specialized transformation existed, so was unable to check for it."

While Sarutobi and Ibiki were digesting this Naruto added

"and I read about it in book I got."

After a moment Sarutobi nodded

"It could work. I am wondering how you managed to wear that henge through the last three weeks though."

At this Ibiki started in surprise, but Naruto just said

"I am not currently using the henge technique Hokage-Sama."

"Come now Naruto-kun, I knew you when you were an infant, I know what you really look like. What did you upgrade to some new technique your summons gave you just before you went through training?"

"No Hokage-Sama, there is not currently any technique altering my appearance. However, shortly after leaving the orphanage I came across the underground bunker where I currently live, as I'm sure you know, and one of the things I found was technique for rapid maturation of children to accelerate their training. The scroll contained several warnings that due to the fact that the technique had to be running constantly for some time on the recipient's own chakra supply and because of the large chakra expenditure and the young age at which it was only effective, that it could only be used by a very few.

"However, I did use the technique and as a result my body changed to as you see it now, by the time I started the academy I had already stopped using it and the scroll containing the technique had been destroyed when they opened the sewer drainage overflow. I don't know if this helps, but the markings on my face were the first to disappear."

"A technique designed to make your body older that changed how you look completely, and your facial marking disappeared first? I do have one idea, perhaps your markings were highly condensed seals designed you keep you looking one way and then you introduction of this new technique, forcing so much change so fast broke the seals causing you to revert to how you were supposed to look. That's the only thing I can think of."

Naruto nodded

"That makes sense; perhaps the person who placed those seals had had an affair and wanted to hide the fact from their husband. Why else would anybody go through so much trouble just to hide my appearance? I don't suppose it really matters anymore; they are probably all dead by now, I am an orphan after all."

"Yes I suppose so. Why don't you go get some rest Naruto, I'll look into this mystery for you. While I'm not putting you in any trouble for forging official documents, given why you did it and how you exposed a hole in your defenses, I am going to have to schedule an appointment for you with Inoichi to monitor your recovery. It's standard after the sort of thing you just went through."

Naruto said "Yes Hokage-Sama" as he left

When he'd gone Sarutobi asked

"You believe him Ibiki?"

"He's smudging the truth here and there to protect his secrets but yes, he was telling the truth. He proved most of it himself. He's the Kyuubi Jinchuriki isn't he?"

"Yes, though that isn't to go beyond these walls, anonymity is all that is keeping the villagers from turning on him. But that's not what's bothering me, I thought I knew who his parents were, now I have to wonder if he's right and the father was someone else."

"Is that really that important sir?"

"To some people? Yes, extremely important. I need to get to the bottom of this before it all gets out of hand."

**With Anko **

When Anko showed up at the bar she found her friends were already there.

"Hey Anko, we haven't seen you for a while. What happened?"

"Oh, hey 'Nai-chan. Sorry, I need a drink I just had the craziest month."

After a few shots she continued.

"For the last three weeks we've been giving this kid top level resistance training."

"So you've been torturing some fast track genin. What's so special about that?"

"No not a genin, an academy first year."

"WHAT!" the whole table yelled at once.

"Oh yeah, and let me tell you that kid was tough, he actually told me off for trying to talking him out of it, the smart little bastard.

Yugao gave a low whistle

"And the funny thing was he looked a lot like you Kurenai."

"Like me?"

"Oh yeah, he had black hair with a bit of curl on the end, pale skin, a bit on the skinny side, and the exact same eyes you do, never seen them on anybody else buy you and your dad."

"That's because they're a clan based characteristic, they're totally unique." Kurenai said in a low voice.

"Yeah, well maybe not as unique as you thought. Oh yeah! your dad, that reminds me. He had that same expression your dad always wore, you know the one like he took everything way too seriously."

Just as Kurenai was about to make a comeback Ibiki sat down and ordered some more drinks.

"So Anko, you know that kid who walked out today?"

"Yeah, we were just talking about it."

"Well it turns out that he wasn't sent there for revenge or as some perverts plaything like we were thinking. You ready for this? He figured out how to forge the required documents and get them officially stamped 'cause thought it was a good idea, all by himself."

"You're shittin' me."

At the shake of his head she asked

"How the hell did he do that?"

"Oh that's classified till we can stop anyone from doing it again. Oh and get this, you know how we thought he was seven? Well turns out he used a forbidden jutsu he got his hands on to speed up his growth so he could become a shinobi even sooner and he's actually five right now."

"Where were his parents in all of this?" Kurenai asked

"Dead, he was orphaned during the Kyuubi attack."

"Well I've got to run, I just wanted to tell Anko about it before I went home."

As he left Kurenai leaned back in thought.

"Hey Anko, what did you say this kid's name was again?"

"Oh? I didn't, I think it was Naruto or something like that. Why, what's on your mind?"

"Just that he has features unique to my family, was orphaned the day my father died and wears a similar expression that my father wore. It's worth investigating if nothing else."

"Just don't get your hopes up; it's a good way to get them dashed."

"I'll be careful."

**With Naruto **

Three days after his meeting with the Hokage Naruto had received a notice for his session with Yamanaka Inoichi. He'd asked Naruto how he was recovering; he'd told him he was doing fine. Inoichi asked what had made him do it, and Naruto told him. They went back and forth, Inoichi asked about his past, his drives, his feeling, his time at the orphanage, his earliest memories and on and on. Faking a good psychological evaluation is more difficult than just a few well-placed lies, so he didn't even try, he just made sure to keep his secrets secret and then let Inochi draw his own conclusions.

After that he was excused and he left. They met two more times before Inoichi said he had enough to make his report.

**With Sarutobi **

He looked up when there was a knock at the door.

"Enter"

Inoichi came through and sat down

"So what's your verdict?"

"Well I can safely say I know what drove him to let himself be tortured for three weeks."

"Oh. Enlighten me."

"He wants to be in ANBU."

"That's it?"

"I don't think you quite understand just yet. You see, ever since you moved him to the orphanage that drive has been his sole purpose in life."

"What? But he was only at HQ for a few months, and he was too young to remember any of it."

"I believe not Hogake-Sama. It is my belief that he has memories of those first few months, and his developing mind associated the place and how the people acted with the idea of home. That is probably why he's so rooted in their ideals. For instance, I asked him what he thought of to get through being interrogated, he told me that he thought it was his mission and that he had to complete it at all costs. When I asked him about why he lived below ground he said that village was enemy territory for him, so he lived underground where it was safe and hid in plain sight the rest of the time."

"So those times when he was little and I'd come visit him at the orphanage? He'd be extremely correct in his responses and such. I thought he was being cute, like it was his way of trying to connect with adults."

"No Hokage-Sama. I suspect he was trying to prove to what he thought of as a superior officer that he was ready to be returned to active service."

"So is he mentally sound?"

"At the moment, amazingly, but it's an incredibly unhealthy way to live. As far as I can see he has no attachments in the village, no social interaction, no one he can connect to, he just relentlessly pursues his ambition with no regard for his safety, this last incident was just the only one we caught him on. He needs to have someone in his life that he can trust, or he will go crazy in the end, and I'm not going to be placing any bets on it being later rather than sooner."

"That may be more of a problem than you might think, but I'll see what I can do."

Inoichi got up and left.

_"Who could he have Naruto connect to? In the past he would have immediately thought of Kakashi or Jiraiya, but with who his father was legitimately in doubt there was no way that would work. He obviously couldn't do what he'd done before, stick him with the ANBU or dump him at the orphanage that would just exacerbate the problem. What to do?"_

He decided to watch the target of his thoughts and pulled out his crystal ball, tuning it in he saw Naruto in class through the window. He sat there pondering, letting his thoughts settle themselves, until he saw a distortion at the bottom of the image. Someone was watching Naruto under a concealment genjutsu! He leapt out of his chair and went to investigate.

He got there almost instantly, and carefully snuck up on the observer. Crouching down next to them on the branch he said

"I see we have the same focus of interest, what a coincidence."

The person whirled around bringing out a knife to stab him in the throat, but just in time managed to throw themselves off balance in order to miss him. With the concealment genjutsu lifted he saw a young woman with dark hair and red eyes.

"H-ho-Hokage-Sama, what are you doing here."

"Oh, the same as you, spying on unsuspecting academy students."

"I can explain. You see, a friend of mine from T&I told me about this one kid she saw and said that he looked a lot like me, that he had characteristics unique to my family, and that he'd been orphaned on the same day my father died."

Sarutobi glanced between the girl and Naruto

"Indeed the resemblance is striking."

"So you see, that I had to find out if I had any family left, I'm the last you see."

"What's your name?"

"Kurenai Yuhi, Chunin, nineteen years old."

"Yuhi? I seem to recall them, a small family but specializing in some of the less blatant shinobi arts, correct?"

"Yes Hokage-Sama."

"Kurenai-kun, do you know that I very much suspect you are the answer to my latest problem."

"Sir?"

"As it so happens, I do not know of any information that could disprove your suspicions, and I have just looked at Naruto's file. At the same time, though he doesn't know it yet, he needs someone to take him in."

"What do you mean he doesn't know it yet?"

"What do you know of his current living conditions?"

"He lives at the orphanage doesn't he?"

Sarutobi scowled at the mention of the orphanage

"No, he is currently living in the sewer."

Kurenai looked shocked, of course the Hokage hadn't elaborated that it was more 'sewer adjacent' but it probably wouldn't have mattered all that much.

"The sewer, why would he stay there?"

"Because the doesn't feel safe on the surface, after he left the orphanage at the age of three he viewed the village as threatening, as being 'behind enemy lines'. That may be part of the reason that he is so distrusting of those around him."

"Distrusting?" Kurenai's heart was breaking a little more with every word, just as the Hokage intended.

"Yes, he has no friends, no one he can talk to, no one he feels he can trust in the world. I just read the psychological evaluation; Inoichi feels it won't be long before he cracks under the strain."

She couldn't stop herself from crying, sitting there was someone who was quite probably her little brother, or half at any rate, and he had already gone through so much.

"He really does need someone doesn't he?"

"Yes he does. But before you decide, why don't we make sure? We'll do a blood test. That way there's no doubt."

"Yes your right, of course."

**With Naruto **

_"You know Naruto, for an excuse we made up, that 'this is what I really looked like that whole time' theory isn't all that implausible." _

_"You're forgetting the part where we chose how I looked." _

_"Actually, what I was seriously implying was that your old whisker marks might have been seals." _

_"I thought that that was a consequence of being your host?" _

_"Except that none of my previous hosts had them, and even if you were a true Uzumaki, the children of Mito Uzumaki didn't have them even though they were born from my host at the time, so neither would any children of Kushina Uzumaki if she had any. To the best of my knowledge, they were there before I was sealed into you." _

_"So you think that the explanation we came up with the hide your involvement is _coincidentally_ the truth?" _

_"I'm just saying, even with what you know, it could still technically be the truth." _

He was about to think something he was _sure _would have been scathing, when he was interrupted by a note to go to the Hokage's office. Getting up from his desk and left quickly for his destination.

After he was let in he was met by the Hokage and two others, a doctor and a kunoichi.

"Good you're just in time Naruto, this will just take few drops of your blood and a couple of minutes."

The doctor gestured for his hand which Naruto offered, drawing some blood he used a kit to test for blood types, when he got his conclusion he glanced at the Hokage and nodded who in turn did the same to the kunoichi. She then bent down to eye level with him and asked

"Naruto, have you ever wondered who your parents were?"

**AN: Some people will probably complain that totally resisting interrogation is impossible. That may be true. However, people don't bitch when Naruto has a godlike ability for elemental jutsu, so it if helps just imagine that this Naruto has Godlike willpower and determination. **

**I broke down how to actually interrogate someone, because I'm sick of people getting it WRONG. I can't count the number of times I've been in so much pain I couldn't feel it any more. I have both a high pain threshold and a high pain resistance, so there is very little room between the point where I feel something as painful and when that feeling overloads my nerves. For the other stuff, it's even on Wikipedia if you don't believe me, though I didn't need to read that to know the impact of willpower and ego degradation on successful interrogations. **

**Incidentally this is one of my favorite chapters, cause it shows Naruto being more awesome than everyone else. **

**Ibiki is a sadist, but most characters in fiction don't particularly ****_want_**** to hurt children unless they can excuse their actions in some way. For instance, in the world of Naruto there are child soldiers and thus there is a need to torture children, but they can excuse this by saying "Oh they're enemies" or "thieves" or whatever. **

**Sarutobi IS manipulating Kurenai, he knows that she's a softy so he figures she's convenient. **

**Is Naruto related to Kurenai? Find out next time. Or go back and reread the chapter where I discuss his change of appearance, or PM me for spoilers. **


	6. Meet the Sister

**ANBU Since Birth**

"Naruto, have you ever wondered who your parents were?"

"I have never considered the issue to be relevant to my current situation."

"So you don't want to know if you have any family left, family that might want to get to know you?"

"I am an orphan, those children who find themselves at the orphanage and with family still living are usually abandoned. I doubt it is likely I have family or if I do that they have any interest in me."

"Naruto, your appearance is that which is unique to my family, the blood test shows that we have the same blood type, with each of our mothers have type O. I am your sister."

Now Naruto new where he'd seen her before, she was that kunoichi who he'd copied his appearance from.

"I hardly think it likely mam."

Sarutobi chose that moment to speak up

"I'm afraid it's true Naruto, there really is no other explanation."

Kurenai said

"You must understand, our father died on during the Kyuubi attack, around the time you were born. It is likely that either he didn't know about you or he hadn't gotten a chance to tell me of your existence yet, so I never knew to look for you. Please forgive me for not finding you until now."

Naruto looked to be in shock, but on the inside he was panicking

_"Kyuubi-Sama, what do I do? This is crazy!" _

_"Do you have any idea how suspicious it would look for an orphan your age, living on the streets, not to take her up on this? It'd be like a giant flashing sign 'HE IS HIDING SOMETHING!', on the other hand this all might play out to your advantage, and you never know, she might really be your sister." _

_"You knew! You knew that this was going to happen." _

_"They were talking about it right outside the classroom window, I'd hardly be the best sensor in the _world _if I couldn't figure out what they were planning from there." _

_"Isn't somebody going to figure out the truth? How did I even pass that blood test?" _

_"Well, if it isn't the truth then I doubt anyone will ever know, and as for the blood test, what do you know about the study of heredity?" _

_"There are genes which determine certain factors, you inherit genes from your parents and they can be tested to determine whether people are related or not. That's why I'm worried." _

_"Partly right and far too simplified. What forgot is that they have yet to find the physical representation of those genes. When you read about them 'comparing genes' to check whether people were related or not they were talking about comparing the traits the genes affect, for instance eye color or hair color, there is a basic and well understood chart that allows you to determine which parentage's are impossible." _

_"Then what was that I read about Orochimaru working on implanting bloodlines into living subjects?" _

_"That was gene _therapy, _totally different thing. The fact he was so unsuccessful just goes to show he didn't understand what he was doing." _

_"That still doesn't explain how I passed the blood test." _

_"Well maybe when you altered your appearance your genes were forced to alter as well to make your body biologically viable… Or maybe you really were born her little brother, we'll never know now." _

_"Is this supposed to be one of those 'ignorance is bliss' situations?" _

_*Sigh* "Yeah, but not like you were thinking. I really didn't want you to ever find out about this, but the decision to choose her looks wasn't so random, I may have manipulated you a bit when I sensed the familial similarities in the chakra signatures. Oh, and then I lied to you when I said that the seals you placed in your mindscape were for the henge, it was actually a basic seal breaker followed by a temporary age acceleration seal." _

"_So basically, you knew that I had family and deliberately manipulated me into not knowing in order to further your own ends. Is that right?" _

_"You're taking this rather well."_

_"I'm furious, but I have known you long enough that the prospect doesn't actually surprise me too much, and I can understand why you did it." _

_"Look at it this way; I needed you as dedicated to mastering shinobi skills and mindsets as could be. Having someone to connect to would only have interfered with that, and at the time you would likely have agreed, hell you'd probably agree now if situations were different." _

_"I am well aware of your reasoning, but this is not the time. We'll sort out our differenced later Kyuubi-Sama." _

Blinking suddenly Naruto came out of his thoughts to find the other occupants both staring at him.

"Yes well, upon due consideration I believe I can give this a try."

"Naruto, my name is Kurenai Yuhi."

Then reaching down to give him a quick hug she said

"You could be Naruto Yuhi if you wanted."

Naruto shrugged. Sarutobi smiled at him and handed him a storage scroll.

"Why don't you go a pack your things and meet us back here? I have to finish up with Kurenai-Kun before you go get settled."

Taking the scroll without complaint Naruto left to do as he was told.

"Now that that is all out of the way, there are a few things you have a right to know about, if for no other reason than to stave off disaster later. The first thing you should know is that Naruto has the Kyuubi sealed inside of him."

Expressions flowed across her face at the news, confusion, anger, doubt, sadness.

"On top of all that he has to carry around the monster that killed his father?"

"Yes, though his identity as the Jinchuriki is a closely guarded secret, event from him. If it gets out, people will not take it well."

"I understand sir, I won't say anything."

"Good. The other thing you have a right to know is the reason behind everything Naruto has done since he was a year old, as far as we can tell, has been geared specifically to get into ANBU. It seems likely that as an infant he based his social expectations on active duty members of that organization and has been striving to become one of them ever since. It's a bit more complicated than that, but you can read all about it in his mental evaluation. "

"That…"

"Maked sense in a twisted sort of way?"

"Yes, exactly. It explains so much, but is so crazy you don't want to believe it."

"I know, I had a similar response. Inoichi says that any progress on his mental state will be extremely slow, and because it was engrained almost since birth, he'll probably always exhibit those patterns not matter what we do."

"So what do I do? How do I get close to him, make him trust me?"

"He ignores people that are of no practical use to him, for now I'd show that you have skills or resources he values and then use that, along with your living together, as a basis for building future trust and friendship."

**With Naruto **

He'd just finished sealing his belongings, it hadn't taken long; he only really had a few changes of cloths, some weapons and some old books he kept as reference materials.

"Alright, it's time to clear this up, why are you pushing for this? If you had wanted you could have found a way to get me out of this mess, but you clearly have some motive for this I don't understand yet. So tell me."

"It seems you have forgotten what that ANBU instructor told those recruits. You need to have a small number of external relationships to keep you grounded. I don't count; I'm your teacher and your symbiote, not your friend. In the end, my reason for pushing this is the same reason I'm helping you at all, my reputation. If you go off the deep end, then I'll be right back where I was before, and if you become an emotionless tool then everyone will say 'oh the village must of done that to him to make a better weapon' ignoring my work completely. I'm sure the chameleons would agree with my assessment if they knew how totally isolated you were. There's a reason that no clan lets emotionless drones summon them."

In the past, whenever the Kyuubi had lied to him or manipulated a situation Naruto had always assumed that since their goals aligned in practice that he could trust the Kyuubi to do what was best for the both of them. Now he was beginning to realize that the Kyuubi was playing a much longer game. Oh his goals were exactly what he claimed, but he was setting up moves years in advance, trying to forge Naruto into his perfect shinobi avatar, regardless of Naruto's own feelings about situations that might be brought up because of this.

One thing was sure; he'd have to be more careful about thinking through the consequences of his actions, no more doing something just because the Kyuubi suggested it. On the other hand, maybe that was maybe that was the lesson here, being more independent of his teacher.

Say what you want about demons but they knew how to get something good out of every bad situation. Get kicked out of the orphanage? Jump start your training. Need to hide in plain sight? Find out how you really look. Get the attention of the Hokage? Get a free sister. Doubting your teacher? Start trying to out think him.

The reason for this is that the Kyuubi's goals were so vague, he knew what he _didn't _want and that made it look like he was always winning in one way or another.

As he got ready to leave he thought about it and the Kyuubi was right, in some respects anyway. The Kyuubi and his summons needed him just as he needed them, but that didn't make them his friends and it didn't mean that if it came down to if they wouldn't choose their own goals over his. It was a mutually beneficial exchange with friendly overtones, but that was all it was. Still, it never hurt to be careful, he'd make sure this girl, this sister of his, was worth getting to know before he let her get close, the idea of having some unmotivated incompetent drag him down made him shudder.

When he got back to the Hokage tower he found Kurenai waiting for him reading a file, he guessed it was probably about him. She looked up

"Read to see where you're going to be staying?"

When he nodded she said

"Great, on the way why don't I fill you in about myself?"

When she didn't hear any object they started walking and she started

"You know my name already, I'm nineteen and a chunin right now. I'm a genjutsu specialist and my dream is to be the best genjutsu user in the village. My best friends are Anko Mitarashi who is an apprentice at the T&I department, and Yugao Uzuki who is currently an ANBU recruit. And for the last five years my fondest wish was to have a family again. Now you go."

_"There, that should have caught his attention, even if he looks down on genjutsu or doesn't want to learn from me, he'll catch that my friends are worth knowing given what the Hokage told me."_

"My name is Naruto, I was assigned the surname Uzumaki though I don't use it. I am currently five, a second year academy student. My best grades are in stealth and genjutsu, my worst are in taijutsu and ninjutsu. My dream is to be inducted into ANBU. I have no friends."

She noticed that he had mimicked her style of introduction, and that while he had told her what his best and worst grades were, he hadn't told her what areas he felt he was good at or what he enjoyed. In fact he hadn't told her anything she hadn't already known.

"Oh come on, tell me something I can't just read in your file."

Naruto though for a bit, something safe he could tell her. He'd throw her a bone.

"When I was three, I had just been kicked out of the orphanage, that night I was on my way to break into the academy, I remember seeing you drinking and talking with your friends. It was shortly after that that the seals keeping my true appearance hidden broke and I stated to look as I do now."

"You mean we've met before?" Kurenai asked surprised

"Not met, I was walking behind you at the time. I don't believe we ever made eye contact even."

"Still, breaking into the academy must have been an adventure. What'd you steal? Have you had very many adventures like that?"

"I didn't _steal _anything; that would be too obvious. I copied down all my study materials and took those. And yes, I have done similar things on several other occasions, depending on what I needed."

"Why don't you tell me about one of them?"

Choosing something that was already known about he replied

"There was the time that I got my summoning contract."

"You have a summoning contract? They're very rare, how did you get it?"

"I learned that there was a contract that had been lost. Or, rather than lost, was currently unreachable. The previous summoner had died and used his last breath to command the boss of his summons to devour all his enemies. The scroll was located inside the boss's stomach. The summon liked to transform into a building and let the unwary walk right in to be eaten."

Kurenai was listening with rapt attention

"How nasty. What'd you do?"

"I don't know about nasty, he was using it as a test to see who was worthy of being their next summoner. Anyway, I referenced what I knew about the summon to determine where it would be and walked through his mouth. Then I used stealth, genjutsu and distractions to keep the boss busy while I found the scroll and signed it. Simple as that."

He'd intentionally smudged over the fact that the 'distractions' had been shadow clones, that he'd only found the scroll because he was a sensor and that Shiromari was in Neck country at the time, best not to let people know he could get out of the village if he didn't have to.

"What were you thinking! You could easily have been killed."

"I imagine many _were_ killed. I was thinking that I needed to find the right summoning clan, lest someone else choose for me later. I had learned that this clan was one that would best match my skill set."

"What's so special about this clan anyway?"

"They were the ones who made it possible for me to convince the T&I department to go through with my conditioning. You can imagine how useful it would be for someone in my position to be able to go anywhere and get anything they needed."

She thought about it, what it would be like to have to steal most of your resources, being unable to ask people in authority for help for fear of being recognized. She had to admit it would be useful to have summons be able to do most of the hard work for you. Her thoughts were interrupted by Naruto

"I supposed it doesn't matter anymore, I can't use that same method to push through fake documents anymore, not after they caught me the first time. If only Morino-San had just done his job and not complained to the Hokage, none of this would have happened."

_"Yes" _she thought _"Thank kami for Ibiki."_

"We're here; this is your new home. Our family used to own a house, but after my mother died, father sold it and moved me to this apartment; I've lived here ever since. You can have his old room, it's just used for storage now, but we can clear it out to make room for your things tomorrow."

"I don't need much room; I only brought a few things."

"Nonsense, now that you don't have to steal things and aren't living underground, I'm sure you'll get more."

Naruto shrugged, he'd never had much use for extraneous possessions, but he supposed it was always possible.

"Why don't you drop off your stuff in your room and look around. Then in a little while we can go eat, I want to introduce you to my friends."

When they got to where Kurenai usually met her friends, she stopped him

"There's Anko. Naruto I want you to do something for me. She's been feeling bad about what she had to do to you. So, it'd be nice if you went up to her and thanked her in person, while demonstrating the results of what she did to you; I heard you looked pretty cold when you first got done with the conditioning."

Naruto nodded, not really understanding, and walked forward.

Just then Anko heard something that she wished to never hear, something that had actually plagued her dreams until a few weeks ago. A low flat voice, the voice of a child who's dead inside and would never feel joy again, said behind her

"Excuse me miss, thank you for your hard work."

She turned around slowly, dreading what she would see. There was the boy she recognized, and right behind him was her best friend laughing her ass off.

"Hey Anko I want you to meet my new little brother, Naruto."

"Nai-chan you bitch! You didn't have to freak me out like that."

Naruto was confused for a moment until he got it. This was one of the pranks like he saw with the other kids at the academy, he'd seen them before but he'd never participated. He didn't know how to act in this scenario so he reverted to his 'off duty' personality and bowed

"I apologize for my sister's thoughtlessness and my own complicity in this matter."

The two girls blinked a couple of times before roaring with laughter, Anko slapped him on the back, pitching him forward

"You don't have to be so formal all the time you know, it's good to relax. Unless you can't and you need aunty Anko to teach you how."

Kurenai was a bit scandalized by this, Anko had obviously already been drinking, but Naruto interjected

"If I find I have that problem in seven or eight years I'll be sure to learn everything you care to teach me."

"Oh look 'Nai-chan, the boy knows how to play."

"Shush, he doesn't even know what you're talking about."

"I should have thought it was obvious. She was using inappropriate sexual innuendo to try to embarrass you and confuse me. By reposting as I did it evened the playing field and reset the tone of the discussion to that of a lively banter."

They both just looked at him for a moment before he went on

"Controlling the flow and outcome of a conversation is an essential skill. I thought everyone knew that."

"Yeah, it's a basic skill, but for shinobi who are doing negotiations or interrogations, not for those who are still trying to get to genin level."

"Are going to eat or not, 'cause I'm starving."

As they started eat Anko looked over

"You know 'Nai-chan we should really test out Naruto, see what he can do."

"Come one Anko, he's only finished his first year at the academy, how would that possibly be interesting?"

"Yeah, but if your intending to train him then we should really find out his full range first, you know, his strengths and weaknesses, what his talents are."

"What do you think Naruto?"

_"What do I think? I think I'm trapped. If they test me then I can't hold back too much it will be obvious, if they know I'm hiding my skills it will tell them that I'm not trying to connect with my sister, and I actually do intent to put in an effort. On the other hand if I actually do try then they'll know my style, but they might be able to help me to improve, and it's possible I could convince them to keep my skills quiet if I explain it right. Also if I outright refuse it will be obvious that I just don't want them to see my skills for some reason." _

In the end he really didn't have much of a choice.

"Sure sounds like fun."

"Great, I'm open tomorrow morning. Oh, I should ask Yugao if she's free, this is going to so fun."

"Anko!" Kurenai scolded "We are not going to pick on my little brother, we're just going to find out where he's at is all."

"Yeah, yeah."

The next morning Kurenai led him to a nearby training field, to meet Anko and her other friend Yugao. He had to wonder what the odds were of his new sister having two unrelated friends with purple hair, but let it pass as they got closer.

"So you must be Naruto" the girl with the sword said "How are you holding up, finding you suddenly have a big sister must be tough."

"The shock of it has left some lingering doubts in my mind, but it seems that they will likely disappear as things start to become normal."

Yugao nodded in understanding and asked

"OK, who wants to go first?"

Anko raised her hand in the air and shouted

"I do, I do. You ready punk? Taijutsu only, show me what you've got."

Due to their relative sizes and her longer reach she took up a defensive position

"Come at me with the intent to kill."

As the other two girls got out of the way Naruto couldn't help but wonder why she had even bothered to say that. The problem was that he'd designed his fighting style around the concept of 'one hit, certain kill' he'd have to change attitudes entirely in order to incapacitate someone. On top of that he'd worked out the kinks in his style by using it to wipe out bandits, so when she told him to come at him with the intent to kill, there was really no other way he was planning to do it.

Since this was a straight taijutsu match he couldn't really use his stealth techniques to get the jump on her and she was just waiting for him, so he figured he'd have to rely on speed and agility to overcome her.

The two observers watched as Naruto closed the distance with a chakra powered leap, his fingertips glowing green with medical chakra. Naruto almost got her by surprise with the first blow, she hadn't expected him to be that fast, his strike was aimed to pulverize her heart but she blocked him by the forearm, so he twisted around and aimed another strike at her shoulder, and in return she grabbed his foot and threw him across the field.

"What the fuck was that! They just teach anybody Hebi style now or something? And what was that thin you were doing with your hands? that glow?"

"That was my variation on the Hebi style, the glow of my hands was the chakra scalpel technique."

"Where did you learn the Hebi style?" she yelled "it's not exactly something you can pick up at the library."

"No it's not, but it's not too hard to find out who has requisitioned the scroll for it, sneak into the Shinobi tools research building and make a copy."

"Why'd you change it, what's wrong with the style as it is?" people can get a bit defensive about their martial arts.

"The moves were perfectly adequate, but the style was designed to create intense pain and debilitating injuries with as little effort as possible, whereas I needed a style that was more deadly than sadistic."

The two observers were surprised at the speed and skill behind the blows that had been exchanged.

"How is taijutsu one of his worst grades when he can fight like that?" Kurenai asked

"I don't know, but it makes me wonder what else he can do."

They went back to watching Naruto and Anko pair off, by the end of the match Anko had a dislocated wrist, Naruto had taken more than a few blows, but his healing factor had taken care of them immediately. When they walked up Kurenai smacked him over the head

"What was that? Didn't you realize that she was joking about trying to kill her? What was with all the lethal strikes you tried to land?"

"Calm down 'Nai-chan, no harm done. Besides, it's been a while since anyone has seriously tried to kill me."

"I thought you said that weren't very good at taijutsu Naruto."

"I didn't actually say I wasn't good at it, I said that I had bad grades in it. I realized before I signed up for the academy that if I wanted to get the right team then I had to show the right skills. With the emphasis they put on taijutsu and my chakra reserves, if I hadn't concealed them I would have been labeled a taijutsu/ninjutsu specialist, and that is the last thing I want. So I manipulate my grades to get what I want out of the place."

Yugao whistled "Smart. Wish I'd of thought of that at the academy. Anyway, are you any good with a sword?"

Naruto nodded and went to go get his blade from the sealing scroll.

"I've been thinking about it, from what I've seen and heard of Naruto he's obviously frighteningly intelligent for his age, and his values are practically alien, but sometimes you can see a hint of emotional immaturity or naivety, some evidence that he doesn't have all that much life experience and is really just a kid." Kurenai said, thinking out loud.

Anko considered this for a moment

"He reminds me of how we used to be, during the war, but more fucked up. That's not what worries me though, what worries me is that he was too sure of his kill strokes. If he'd just studied where to hit then there would have been hesitation and he would have had trouble finding the exact spots to hit on a real person. There was none of that though, I think he's killed before, and probably more than once."

While Kurenai was busy being shocked they heard Yugao say the fight would stop at first blood and the clanging of metal on metal begin.

"Anko he's five"

"He looks six or seven"

"He's never even been out of the village"

"You don't know that, have you asked?"

"No, I'd just assumed. But now that I think about it, there could be tunnels underground that go under the barrier, he has summons who could potentially reverse summon him beyond the walls, and he is really skilled at stealth, he might have been able to sneak out the main gate with the merchants."

"Did you ask how he got those summons?"

"Yes of course, but now that I think about he just said he figured out where the boss was going to be, he didn't mention a location."

"I can't imagine there was a known, unclaimed summoning scroll inside the village this while time. It would have to be somewhere else, someplace not frequented by very many shinobi to have not been claimed already."

"We'll talk with Naruto about this when they get done."

It took about ten minutes of Yugao defending and Naruto trying to use all his skill to get a hit, before Naruto got cut and the match ended.

"So Yugao how is he?"

"About the level of an experienced genin I'd say, at least in a fight. Weird sword style though, almost reminiscent of the style ANBU teaches, but less defensive and more geared towards speed and precision."

Kurenai could only sigh at this "Why am I not surprised that it would be something like that?"

Anko waited for Naruto to be preoccupied with check his blade before she asked

"Hey Naruto, you were pretty good out there, how did you get so skilled."

Naruto, not paying attention replied

"Lots of practice"

Keeping her tone nonchalant she went on

"Oh yeah? How many people did you kill?"

"Seventy three."

The Kurenai and Yugao's conversation stopped instantly.

"any villagers?"

"no mostly bandits."

Then he realized what she'd just been asking he looked up

"Wait, what?"

"Hah! I knew it; no one gets that good without practical experience."

"Why would you do that Naruto-chan?" Kurenai asked softly

Naruto was still a bit frazzled by the impromptu questioning

"Huh? Oh, I read that it was best to get your first kill in a controlled environment. I'm quite glad I did too, the first time I went out I made a lot of mistakes, you know I almost missed somebody the first time. It was really embarrassing. So then I had to keep on going out to fix all of my mistakes, by the time I had done that and gotten all the kinks worked out of my fighting style I had racked up seventy three kills."

"Well, as ways of gaining practical experience it's better than hunting down random villagers, or doing like they do in Kiri." Noted Yugao

Kurenai still didn't look happy though

"But he should have to kill so young! That's my problem. There's no reason to worry about it till you're a genin, and then your team leader can arrange that sort of mission for you." Turning her attention back to Naruto "You shouldn't have had to go through that alone."

"I didn't have any problems with it afterwards; I just told myself that they were a mission."

Yugao rolled her eyes

"Ugh, please don't say that, you're reminding me of my instructor. He's always droning on and on about the 'paramount importance of the mission' I'm about at the end of my rope."

Naruto tried to think, which one had droned? Rat he thought but he couldn't be sure.

**AN: According to the wiki, Yuhi means 'evening sun', so her name would be Crimson Evening Sun, and Naruto's would be Maelstrom of the Evening Sun. **

**I don't think Orochimaru would be that unsuccessful on replicating blood lines if he had actually found DNA. What it sounds like is that he is trying to use gene therapy to force the bloodline onto a fetus or infant. In fact he probably has no idea what part of the DNA to affect, which would explain who there were like a couple thousand failures. **

**Naruto learns that not everything is as it seems, and that he can't always trust the Kyuubi. **

**Kurenai's personality. You have to remember that she is younger here than in the show. Second, she is trying hard to make him feel comfortable but at the same time is protective. Her relationship with Anko, I see Anko as being pretty emotionally fucked up, so Kurenai tries to make her feel included in things. The fact that she sees Naruto as emotionally damaged makes her try to include him as well. So while she is a serious person, she unconsciously tries to set up situations that will make them feel included and socially accepted. **

**Right now I'm using the Itachi age/power scale. So if Itachi was a genin at six and an ANBU captain at thirteen then that will probably fit pretty closely. Something I've come to realize is that I SUCK at writing fight scenes. So it's a good thing that he's more of an assassination type fighter, but at the same time the fights will ****_seem_**** easy, since he will either win quickly or retreat to try again. **

**Also, these next few chapters will be a bit more touchy feely. Naruto will be getting to know his sister and meeting a number of new acquaintances. That is, people that he is around often, but doesn't really trust. **


	7. Graduation Presents

**ANBU Since Birth **

When Naruto and Kurenai got back to their apartment she told him

"We pretty much agree, your combat abilities are C rank while your genjutsu and ninjutsu are at about B and C respectively, and your stealth is at A rank."

He nodded at this, it made sense, as they went to go clean out his room.

"Naruto, you probably think that I'm trying to smother you here, and I don't want that. It's just that you've rushed into being a shinobi so fast. I get that you didn't see any other option and that you were headed straight for your goal, but hearing about the reckless things you've done in pursuit of that; the times you could have been killed, or arrested, or couldn't handle something emotionally, it makes me worry. Did you know that the first kill is the cause of the majority of dropout genin?"

"Yes, I had heard that before."

"You've got two more years before you graduate, and in that time I want you to promise me that you won't take any more stupid risks trying to reach your goal."

Naruto thought about it for a bit, when he did he realized he didn't actually know of any skills he needed to push for or things he needed to do in that time, and everyone was saying that he needed to build bonds. So there was no reason not to. When he opened his mouth to speak Kurenai stopped him

"I know that I haven't known you very long at all, and I don't have any right to ask this of you, but I want you in my life, so please do it for me."

"I promise"

No, that wasn't enough; he wanted to show her how serious he was about being a family with her, about creating a relationship. So he broke one of his rules, one he had never broken, and called her just by her name.

"I promise, Kurenai."

It was almost physically painful, no honorifics, no due respect, just the familiarity of using their given name by itself.

At his words she drew him into a hug, he let her. He guessed that she was worth getting to know, now if only she would stop trying to dig up all his secrets. He was broken from his thoughts when a box tipped over, spilling its contents.

They both looked down and Naruto reached to picked up a picture that had fallen out, of four people.

"Oh, that' a picture of our father with his old squad. See, you can tell by the swords they're all wearing that they were an ANBU squad. He was a captain until I was born, then went back to the regular forces to spend more time with his family."

Tidying up the box Naruto couldn't help but wonder if that's where he got it from.

**Time Skip Two Years **

It had taken a month for Naruto to start really opening up to Kurenai. When he realized that she was the only person in his life with no ulterior motive he started to trust her with his secrets. He told her everything that he thought was his secret to tell. This meant that he didn't tell her about the Kyuubi, or the mysterious supply drops in the sewers, but everything else that had happened in his life he shared with her. Once that happened he started using her surname and got his registration changed to Naruto Yuhi officially. He never quite got comfortable with the level of informality implied with just calling her by her name, but she appreciated the effort he put into it along with the knowledge that he'd only do that with people he was sure he could trust.

The Hokage had placed Kurenai on paid leave until he could determine whether or not Naruto was going to warm to her. The sanity of the village's Jinchuriki was worth more to the village than the number of missions an active duty kunoichi could complete in the field, even so she started taking regular missions again after a couple of months. She wasn't going to become the best genjutsu user in the village by doing nothing.

When they had time Kurenai and Anko would help train him. Anko focusing on his summoning technique and taijutsu while Kurenai focused on her specialty. Occasionally Yugao would spar with him as well but that was less frequent.

Now he was sitting for his graduation exams, sure he could have passed before the first day of class, but the last thing he needed was to be a household name like most other prodigies were. Instead he had entered two years early, not that most people knew that, and finished in three. While doing the course in half the usual time was impressive it wasn't unheard of, it usually happened with students that were really good at taking paper tests but only a little above average at practicals.

After he'd aced his written exam he had time to waste so he decided to get to the bottom of something that had been bothering him for a while.

"Kyuubi-Sama, can you tell me why my aging process seems to have been slowing down?"

"What. You thought the effects of that little jutsu, four years ago, would be permanent? It's used as a method to _boost_ your development, not make your life shorter."

"I see. When will the effects wear off?"

"Well, originally you aimed for two years older than you were, and after four years have passed you now only look a year older than you are. So I'd guess when you're eleven or there about."

He thought this over for a while. After last time he'd started going over everything the Kyuubi said, sorting through it for lies and half-truths. The explanation sounded alright, more or less. The only thing he could think of was that the Kyuubi might be hiding a side effect, like it really did cut years off his life. Of course this was a dead end since it was untestable. If true, it could be two years or twenty and there would be no way to know if that jutsu had actually caused him to die younger or not. The important thing was that he would look his age again, and once a person got into their teenage years that became harder to pinpoint anyway. So he put it out of his mind.

Next up were the throwing and taijutsu tests. He made sure to get 10/10 for both the kunai and shuriken portions, but managed to do it without looking like he was showing off. Then the instructors had everyone get around the sparring circle, when it was his turn he got paired with Hana Inuzuka. That suited him just fine, the Inuzuka clan put a lot of emphasis on their taijutsu and he wanted to do poorly on this test.

Hana got into a low crouching stance while Naruto took the academy basic. Knowing only idiots would use banter in a situation where you had to fight no matter what, they both kept their silence. Naruto tried coming in from an angle, using a punch aimed at her jaw. She sidestepped him and kneed him in the gut in passing, then made to finish the fight with a blow to the back of the head.

It was all over in a matter of seconds, the examiners noted that Naruto's form was barely passing by academy standards and that his speed was ok, but wasn't good at taking hits, while Hana got full marks.

Then they were led into the classroom for their jutsu test, the basic three, same as every year. When it was Naruto's turn he made sure to use all of the hand signs for the kawarimi and henge while letting there be a large amount of smoke and noise, but for the bunshin the examiners noted he barely used half a hand sign and they simply phased into existence.

When he left with his headband he couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction. He had gotten exactly the scores he wanted, and since he'd been manipulating his own grades since the very beginning, his scores would not raise any eyebrows. The instructor waited for everyone to sit down before telling them

"The team assignments will be ready in three days, come at the regular class time to hear them. We would have them sooner but it takes time for us to make our recommendation, the Hokage to approve them, find suitable team leaders and get the assignments back to us. So you'll have to wait till then."

Naruto knew not to celebrate just yet, most people didn't and were disappointed later, but Naruto had told Kurenai that if she was planning anything to wait till after he passed the team tests. It didn't really surprise her that he knew about the 'secret' second test, not when anyone with a suspicious mind could find out just by hanging around a shinobi bar or asking somebody not actively interested in keeping it a secret.

**With Sarutobi **

This was the graduation that he'd waited for years so see. Once Naruto became an official Genin of Konoha he was going to tell him about the Kyuubi. More than that, he'd wanted to see Naruto's progress, but he wasn't sure if the results he'd seen were accurate. The recommendation from his instructors had him as the bag-man on a capture team. What made Sarutobi suspicious was that someone as smart and dedicated as Naruto, who had several people overseeing his training for the last couple of years, would do so poorly on some of the sections.

Unfortunately he couldn't ask directly for a list of Naruto's skills. When Hashirama has founded Konoha he'd needed a way to alley the suspicions of paranoid shinobi, so not only are clan techniques protected, but also anything personally invented or invented by your family, and it was illegal for the village to make inquiries into a shinobi or aspiring shinobi's skill set unless there was already an arrest warrant out for them. To get around this they used various assessments, the graduation's second test was the first of these assessments, it was usually used to get a good handle on all the skills each team member may have, how to use them together most effectively and what areas the genin could best be pushed towards for improvement.

The only bad thing is that it was up to the assigned jounin on how seriously to take that assessment. So he'd have to be careful of who he picked. He'd heard from Inoichi that while Naruto was much more stable, his long term goals were still the same, as were most of his beliefs and attitudes. Maybe there was some way he could use that. He needed someone who would follow his instructions and be unbiased, even if the secret of Naruto being the Kyuubi Jinchuriki came out on a mission. A thought struck him; he had the perfect man for the job.

**With Naruto **

"Team three will be Mozuku, Naruto Yuhi and Hana Inuzuka."

A capture team then, Mozuku was obviously destined for the T&I department, so he'd be doing field interrogations, Naruto was there to take out the target and Hana was the tracker.

They didn't have to wait long for the jounin to come in.

"Team one come with me"

"Team ten with me"

"Team three"

As they stood up Naruto gave his new sensei a once over, he had short brown hair and heavy burn scars across one side of his face, but the way he moved told Naruto enough to know just how dangerous he was.

"My name is Raido Namiashi, twenty six years old, special jounin. Introduce yourselves."

It was obvious what he was doing when you thought about it, he had already read their files and they probably already knew each other's names, but not only is it good to make sure, what you give away in an introduction tells a lot about you.

"I'm Hana Inuzuka, heiress of the Inuzuka clan, these are my ninken partners the Haimaru brothers."

"Mozuku" he said as he adjusted his glasses "I'm afraid I'm not much good in a fight, more of a support person really."

"My name is Naruto Yuhi"

Hana perked up when he said this

"Oh Naruto-kun, I never got to talk to you in class, I always wanted to ask you, how old are you?"

Naruto gave her a flat stare

"Seven"

"What! I just thought you were a few years ahead in class and short for your age. I'm almost twice as old as you, makes me feel a bit bad for beating you up in the exam. You're my little brother's age for crying out loud, he's such a little brat though."

Naruto just ignored her. Raido started back up.

"Good, now that that's over with we can get on with the second test. As I'm sure most of you have probably guessed, you were designed to be a capture team. That means that you hunt someone down, take them out and if needs be press them for information in the field. The test will be to see how well your team does at this sort of mission using all the skills at your disposal. For this reason I've requested the aid of an experienced genin, he has years more experience then you, so while it may be difficult you should be able to succeed if you work together. Here's a picture of him, he has the location of the documents I'll need to turn in to pass you as a team, they are already signed. All you need to do is get him to tell you the location and get the documents to me on the steps of the Hokage tower and you pass."

Then with a poof of smoke, Raido disappeared. Naruto picked up the picture, memorizing the face, and handed it the Hana. Then he started to make a cross shaped hand but stopped when he heard Mozuku say

"I've seen this guy before. I think he lives somewhere around the corner from me. We can start there."

Mozuku had picked up the picture and flipped it over, reading the name on the back

Naruto shrugged, dropped his hands to his sides.

They followed Mozuku across the rooftops as they made their way to where he thought their target lived. Checking the mailboxes for the apartment complex against the name on the back of the picture, when they found it they started at his door and ran after the ninken once they had the scent.

They found their target training with his team. They were all older and more experienced, probably about the level of new chunin, so they waited for training to break up.

When their target was walking home and finally alone Hana went to make a move, but Naruto stopped her.

"Watch"

Then he leapt down, on impact he seemed to drop through the shadow like it was a liquid. Neither of his team mates could see what he was doing, but suddenly their target was down and was being dragged into the bushes.

When they got down to where Naruto had stashed him Mozuku said

"Restrain him and wake him up."

When that was done Mozuku got to work finding out the location of what the needed. It turned out that their instructor had lied to his little helper; Raido had told him that he wanted to hide some personal documents where is girlfriend wouldn't find them and would pay him three thousand ryo when he picked them up in a couple of days. After some persuasion their target decided that the money wasn't worth it and gave them the documents, he hadn't even hidden them yet.

Once they had the documents they headed back to Hokage tower and handed then to Raido.

"Good, you finished early. You're dismissed; meet me at training ground three at six tomorrow morning."

Before they got a chance to leave he had already walked through the doors of the tower.

**With Sarutobi **

Sarutobi waited till everyone else had given their reports and told Raido to wait behind; he wanted to talk to him.

"So what can you tell me?"

"Sir, Naruto only demonstrated three skills to complete the test; genjutsu, stealth and, something I wasn't expecting, chakra suppression. So far as I can tell he isn't much different than his scores would suggest. But given that he can suppress his chakra it is also possible that he sensed me watching him and used the least possible effort to accomplish his goal. Perhaps the test was too easy for them; maybe I should have made it an experienced chunin instead. As for his mindset, I couldn't tell you for sure at this point, but I think he was trying to keep from looking too serious for most of the mission to keep from scaring off his team mates. I couldn't see him when he took out that genin but I think I saw him go into a 'battle mode' right before he disappeared."

"I see, we'll continue to keep an eye on him but don't worry, your student isn't under any suspicion. I just want to know how strong he'd gotten."

"Couldn't you just ask him?"

"He only reveals things he thinks of as sensitive when he feels he has no other choice. You don't know him like I do; he's been this way for as long as I've known him."

With the meeting over Sarutobi dismissed Raido. On his way out Raido passed a doctor going in.

Sarutobi looked up at his unexpected visitor.

"Is it that time already?"

The doctor nodded

"I'm afraid so Hokage-Sama. I can't say I envy you, having to explain to those two that they've been in a coma for the last seven years."

_"If that was the only problem, what on earth do I do if they ask me about Naruto? I can't tell them that we know about his true parentage, I don't know what would happen, I wonder if Minato knows. Even if that wasn't the case they'd hate to hear how he turned out. They adhered to an emotion driven, almost pacifistic, philosophy of being a shinobi; whereas Naruto would burn down an orphanage with everybody locked inside it, without a twinge on his face, if he were ordered to. Minato ingrained his philosophy into his students, that's why when Kakashi got accepted into ANBU he got thrown on border patrol. The commander couldn't trust him to have his priorities straight but didn't have enough evidence to kick him out." _

"Doctor, how long will it take to get them healthy again?"

"If it were just a physical thing, six months to a year, but since their coils were damaged they have to relearn their chakra based skills and build their reserves back up, so probably a couple of years. How strong do you need them?"

"We aren't going to tell anybody that they are alive until they are _both_ strong enough to protect themselves from assassins. As I recall Kushina was less skilled than Minato, without the Kyuubi's chakra she'd be even worse off."

"If we can only release them when Kushina is at jounin level, I'd say five or six years."

_"Good, with any luck I'll be dead by then and it will be somebody else's problem." _

"Well, let's go wake them up then."

When they got to the hospital room the doctor stopped their IV and used a medical jutsu to wake them up. After a few minutes the doctor sat them up in bed.

"Old man, is that you? What's going on?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Ummm, we were getting ready for Kushina to give birth."

Sarutobi looked at her in askance

"About the same, the last thing I remember is when Biwako came in. Is that what this is about, did something happen to Naruto?"

"Kushina, Minato. You were both injured in an attack. Your chakra coils were badly damaged so you were put into a medically induced coma to heal. It's been seven years."

"You didn't answer the question, what happened to my baby!"

"Jiraiya took him on a training trip; it was the only way to keep him safe from your enemies. They'll come back when it's time for his generation to take the chunin exams in the village."

"If sensei is taking care of him than he'll be alright."

"I just hope he doesn't come back a pervert."

"I'm sure sensei won't corrupt him. When can we get out of here old man?"

"We need to get you back up to full strength. Due to the damage to your coils you need to retrain, and you'll never be as strong as you were before. There is one other thing, in order to keep you alive while in your coma we told the world that the two of you were dead. Before we can let you out in public, you need to be strong enough to protect yourselves from all the enemies that will come crawling out of the woodwork the moment they hear you're alive. That stands for the both of you."

"How long will that take?"

"The doctor and I agree that it will take between five and six years."

They nodded at that and Sarutobi took his leave.

**With Kurenai **

She looked at Naruto and Anko, they were both sleeping face down on the table, passed out. Anko had said that since he was now legally an adult that she needed to get him drunk. Naruto had accepted this since it was considered a common social bonding experience and it was a good way to learn how to sober up when it counted.

She smiled at the pair. She loved her little brother, but she would be the first to admit that she would have preferred it if he had come to her as a baby rather than have been sent to the ANBU; he always acted so mature. Some people thought he was trying to act older than he was, but she knew the truth was simply that he'd never had a childhood, even as an infant.

She wished that she could have had a chance to teach him to call her Kure-nee-san. She had never even gotten him to call her onee-san before, but she understood that it was incredibly difficult for Naruto to be informal. When he'd first started living with her he'd had to visibly pause and take a moment to force himself to call her just by her name, she worried that anything more might be too much for him.

As much as she would have loved to have a younger sibling that just needed to be held close and comforted, she knew that he needed her more than those other children might. Besides, he was family; being biased came with the territory.

She remembered the gift she'd gotten him for a graduation present.

**_Flash Back_**

"Ok Naruto, now it's my turn. I know that your promise to me not to rush headfirst towards your goal just expired, so I put together something that should help guide you in the right direction and keep you safe."

Naruto unwrapped her package and found an address and an envelope

"The address is to our father's last surviving team mate from when they were in ANBU together. He and his wife were some of the ones to help me through it when father died fighting the Kyuubi. I wrote him a letter of introduction for you, since I doubt he knows you exist; I hate to think what would happen if you tried to tell him you were the lost son of his former team leader and he thought you were desecrating his memory."

"Thank you Kurenai. I will be sure to put it to good use."

**_End Flashback _**

The man had decades of experience being in ANBU, he was getting close to the age where they'd force him to retire to the regular forces. If anyone could help Naruto it would be him.

She picked up the passed out Naruto and carried him into bed. Now what to do with Anko? There wasn't enough room in her room for them to double bunk, they didn't own a couch and she didn't want to leave her best friend leaving over a table all night. Sighing, she dragged Anko into Naruto's room and hauled her into bed with him. If they asked, she'd just say that she wanted to embarrass them. Hmmm, their clothes would stink in the morning if they slept in them drunk, and if that was going to be her excuse then might as well take it a bit further. So she wrangled their them out of their clothes before tucking the two in and tossing their clothes in the washer. She smiled evilly in anticipation of what tomorrow morning would be like; completely forgetting that she was the only one drinking that night that would likely have a hangover.

**With Naruto **

Naruto woke to the sound of cursing

"Shit! Fucking hell, I don't even remember… Kurenai's going to _kill _me. I can't believe I lost it to a little kid, while I was wasted."

Given his immediate circumstances it didn't take much to know what she was talking about.

"I very much doubt it is possible that we had sex last night. However, given your last assertion, I assume that you are utterly lacking in any experience of such behavior. Your attitude is likely taken from your reputation for promiscuity, which in turn was likely given to you through rumors spread for refusal of sexual favors.

"How did you guess that?"

Shrugging Naruto replied

"It's the way these things often go. Your behavior becomes incongruous with what you would have others believe during moments of inattention. You were already unpopular when the rumors began, so people were happy to believe them, turning rumor into common knowledge. Seeing that people had already largely made up their minds about you, you decided to turn that to your advantage, creating a partial façade in which to hide from the world.

"Partial façade?"

"You enjoy teasing, but you are sexually ignorant. You enjoy your work, but you aren't a sadist. You find satisfaction in inflicting pain on others to express the pain of rejection you feel."

"You think you've really got me all figures out don't you?"

"A psychologist could probably do a more thorough job, but I've known you for two years. I've been subjected to your tender mercies and I too know what it feels like to be abandoned by everything you know and care about."

Anko though about this before lying back down.

"Maybe you're right" she sighed "So, how _do _you think we ended up in bed together?"

"Judging by past experience, it was likely Kurenai."

"Yeah, last I remember we were all at the table. I can't imagine she'd want us to sleep out there, since we'd likely wake up sore and possible catch something."

After a comfortable silence Anko looked around

"So this is where you sleep. Where's all your stuff?"

The place looked barren, there were a small number of books, a bed and his equipment, but nothing else.

"I keep everything I don't regularly need in storage seals. Saves room and keeps things organized."

"I do that too, for the tools needed to maintain my equipment. What I meant was where are all the personal items? Your pictures, sentimental reminders, things like that."

"I never saw the appeal. If I can't remember on my own then it's probably not important."

"That's not the way it works kid. You keep things that have meaning to you so that you can bring them out when you want to feel how they make you feel."

Once everyone else had left for the day, Naruto decided to use his sister's gift.

With nothing else to do that morning, he hunted down the address. It was a small wooden house, back from the road with red tulips in the garden.

When he knocked on the door it was opened by an older woman who looked very traditional.

"Excuse me mam, but is your husband home? I have a letter I was supposed to give to him."

"Oh, yes. Why don't you come in and give it to him yourself."

Naruto nodded, walked in and took off his shoes. He came into the main room of their house and saw a severe looking man with long brown bangs going over one side of his face. Without speaking, he handed the letter over to the man; who, upon opening it, started reading.

"I haven't spoken to Kurenai-chan in some time. It says here that you are her little brother, that she discovered you two years ago and took you in. Is that right?"

"Yes sir." This man, Kisuke, had a completely different manner than his appearance would suggest. He was boisterous, loud, seemingly wore his heart on his sleeve.

"You do look like my senpai, but I just can't believe he'd have gotten a girl and not have told me!"

"My sister and I surmise that it is most likely that he was unaware of my birth. It is also possible that I was the unintentional product of a 'one night stand' which he did not think of great enough importance to mention."

"You act a lot like him, he was always telling me to be more serious, pay more attention. I was the youngest of our team, now I'm the only one left." Coughing Kisuke went on "I read here that you are aiming to be in ANBU, Kurenai-chan wants me to give you some pointers once in a while. Trying to take after your old man eh?"

Naruto shrugged. That was certainly a perfectly valid interpretation for his actions, and while it wasn't the _main_ reason for why he was doing it, it had provided a small additional impetus.

Just then a small girl ran into the room

"Daddy, daddy."

Kisuke picked her up before she turned to look at Naruto

"Who's this daddy?"

"The son of an old friend Azami, his name is Naruto. Go on, introduce yourself."

"Hey Naruto-nii-san. My name is Azami and I'm three!" she said, proudly holding out three fingers.

Naruto looked at her. She really did look a lot like her parents, she had the exact same color and style of hair as her father along with his sunny disposition, but with her mother's face and eyes.

"It is a pleasure to meet you Azami-san."

Looking at the dulled metal headband on his arm she asked

"Are you a shinobi?! That's so cool. How did you become one so young?"

"Yes I am a shinobi, a genin. I got to graduate early by pushing myself constantly from before I was your age to achieve my goal."

Kisuke looked sharply at Naruto. _"Now that's interesting, he must have worked hard if what I read was true. To achieve so much so young, and with no one helping him is quite the feat." _Azami spoke up again

"Your goal?"

"To be in ANBU like your father." At this she looked up at her father's face "Though some have stated it differently, preferring to say that I am trying to become a true shinobi."

Kisuke set his daughter on the floor and told her to run along

"A 'true shinobi'? I don't believe I've ever run across that phrase in this context."

"I'm not surprised. It's an archaic term, dating to the clan war period, referring to those who prefer subtly over expressions of raw power or those who use their skills blatantly."

"How long have you been a genin?"

"My team passes our instructor's test yesterday."

"One day huh? Who's your instructor?"

"Raido Namiashi."

"The assassin and elite bodyguard?"

Naruto was surprised by this but didn't show it. He nodded. Naruto had known that his sensei was dangerous, but he hadn't known that he could help him improve his skillset so effectively.

"You must be very pleased to have gotten him, ask him about his sword sometime. Now come on, let's go outside so you can show me what you can do."

When they got outside Naruto created a series of clones; three pairs to fight each other using different methods of combat, and the rest to showcase his jutsu. Kisuke saw that the entire ANBU standard jutsu repertoire was represented and asked incredulously

"How do you know that stuff?"

Naruto looked at him out of the corner of his eye "I _know" _

The implication was clear, don't ask.

"Hah! Well, I might be able to give you some pointers on these skills but it seems to me that what you really need is to learn how to win without using those skills; how to out think your opponent. That's most of what I do. They put me on a form of semi-retirement, where I have a desk job but do field work in the village but without the uniform."

"I see"

"Why don't you come by tomorrow, when you have time, and we can work on it."

"Very well." Bowing he continued "Till tomorrow then Maboroshi-san."

**AN: If you look at the picture of Kurenai's father you'll see he has the same sword that all the generic ANBU use, so it isn't a stretch to say that he was one. **

**Why the Hokage can't just demand information? Say you are an isolated shinobi during the clan wars, you hear about a new village just for shinobi. Now this sounds good, but it is also very likely a trap to get your knowledge. Therefore, the village will _have _to make reassurances just for you to consider it. **

**Yeah, Kakashi's philosophy wouldn't do well at all in a results focused black ops division. **

**Kurenai is also drunk and not thinking very clearly. **

**The reason that Kurenai is the only one of the three to be likely to get a hangover is that she's the only one who's all the way through puberty. A lot of people don't suffer from after affects much until they get into their early to mid-twenties. **

**The scene with Anko. That is how I interpret her character, prickly on the outside but gooey on the inside, a shell to protect herself from betrayal and scorn while at the same time allowing her to vent her frustrations in a socially acceptable manner. **

**The scene _could _be used to start a relationship or a friendship between Naruto and Anko, or I might just leave it as a way of giving Anko more character definition. **

**Kisuke in the show looks really mean, but has a personality _exactly _like canon Naruto. **

**If you look on the wiki you'll see that Kisuke and Azami look ridiculously similar, or at least their hair does. Also Azami is an orphan and Kisuke and his wife are dead by that point. **

**The line "I _know_" comes from an episode of 'Yes Prime Minister', the protagonist is talking with the Israeli ambassador and the guy says "you have a division of paratroopers stationed in Germany you could send to scare off the communist rebels on St. Gorge's Island" "I didn't know that. How do you know?" "I _know_" or in other words, ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. **


	8. Explanations

**ANBU Since Birth **

Naruto met his team in front of the Hokage tower. They were going to be doing D ranks, he knew this but they didn't. When everyone had shown up they went to the mission office

"Ah team Raido. Here for your first mission?" Sarutobi asked

"Yes Hokage-Sama"

After looking through the pile Sarutobi found one that suited them.

"Painting fences. Here you go."

Hana looked at him in speechless shock before Mozuku pulled her along.

"What kind of mission is that! Painting fences. It's just a chore, couldn't some civilian do that themselves?"

Naruto didn't answer her, he could think of many reasons that D ranks existed. It could be to teach patience, or team work, to work on applying their skills in the real world by trying to complete each type of mission in a different way, to stimulate the economy, as a way of getting new shinobi eased into their job rather than just tossing them into the field, or as a way to entertain experienced shinobi by letting them try to set a new speed record. Really the possibilities were endless.

"Ne, Naruto-Kun. You want to go get lunch with Mozuku and I after this?"

"I must decline Inuzuka-San. I'm busy later."

"Oh" Hana was a bit disturbed by his reply. Was he blowing her off, had she offended him in some way, did he not want to be friends? Her thoughts were interrupted by Naruto

"Excuse me Namiashi-Sensei, but I heard that you are an assassin and elite bodyguard."

"Yes that is true."

"I have also heard, from a reliable source, that I should inquire about your sword. It is supposed to be quite interesting."

Raido looked at him oddly for a moment before pulling out his katana

"It's called Kokuto, it means 'black blade'. The sword is imbued with special poisons that won't need to be replaced and won't degrade."

He thought _"Hokage-Sama wants to find out how good he is, maybe I can use this to get him to show more of his skills." _

"Naruto, I see you use a ninjato. When we're done with the fence we're doing team training, I want to see how good you are with your blade."

"Yes sensei.

The team got to training ground three and paired off, Raido against Naruto and Hana against Mozuku, though the last pair were only half paying attention to what they were doing.

Raido wasn't using Kokuto for this fight; he didn't want to accidently kill his student. When the fight started a problem became immediately apparent. Both fighters used styles of swordsmanship designed for assassinations, both were skilled and both were very fast.

Naruto came in high, trying to overcome the difference in their heights, and made a quick thrusting slash for Raido's neck. But Raido had run low to the ground and was swinging diagonally up towards Naruto's waist. Naruto saw that incoming swing and moved his blade to intercept, the clashing of the swords caused him to be thrown several feet away.

The next time it was Raido who attacked, but Naruto parried the blow and counter attacked, aiming at the large vein in his opponent's thigh. Raido twisted out of the way in just in time and pressed his attack again.

They only fought until Raido thought he had Naruto's measure

"Stop! That's enough. You are skilled with the blade, but you over commit the initial attack. You're better at ambushes that take advantage of your small size and you have little experience with defense. There's nothing wrong with aiming to kill your target with the first strike, but you need to be better prepared for him to counter you. As for your defensive capabilities, the skills are there, but you haven't ever had to seriously defend that often in the past."

Drawing a circle in the dirt he went on

"Stand in the middle of that circle, you may not leave it, and I will attack you."

Naruto defended himself from Raido for two hours before the team split up for the day. Then he went to Kisuke's house where they played board games all day. Kisuke openly admitted that the tactics involved in the games had no battlefield applications, but they did help to get you in the mindset of trying to see more moves ahead of your opponent.

Naruto was on his way home for the day, wondering if this was going to be his permanent schedule for a while, when the Kyuubi interrupted his thoughts.

_"Naruto. I need to talk to you." _

_"Yes Kyuubi-Sama, what is it?" _

_"I have been periodically examining the seal that I am trapped in. It is unique in that the seal acts like a hard shell surrounding my soul and attaching it to yours. In the same way that you control your mindscape I control the area inside my cage, it is the membrane between the two that neither of us has control over." _

_"Interesting, but what is so important about this?" _

_"I have observed since I was first sealed into you that my residual youki flows into you, this was originally a way of keeping the strain on the seal low; but as you started to expend more chakra the seal started to _take _more of mine to distribute to you. This seems to have several negative effects. First, the excess quantities of my youki will likely drive you insane like my previous hosts. Second, it will grow your chakra reserves much too fast, making it difficult for you to keep performing subtle justu and especially impossible to perform genjutsu. Worst of all is that this process does not appear to be automated; it seems that there is a pair of sentients within the seal." _

_"How can we fix this Kyuubi-Sama?"_

_"Since we have total, godlike, control of one side each of the membrane that is the seal, I can try to push the threats out while you try to pull them out. But before you do that you need to make sure that they can't fight back and can't get away, so you need to prepare your mindscape to receive them." _

When he got back to the apartment he went straight to his room and got ready. Going to his mindscape he set it up so that he was the only one who had the ability to move or wield power there, not wanting to be tricked or distracted by complete unknowns he makes it so that he and the Kyuubi also the only ones who can talk freely. When he signaled to the Kyuubi that he's ready they began.

It was clear that something was happening almost immediately. There was a slight distortion to the sealing tag on the gates which soon split into two. Naruto latched onto the distortions and PULLED. After a minute of this two people emerged.

"Naruto, those are a variation of the shadow clone. Quickly, before they can transmit any information, block their signal to the rest of their soul."

Naruto quickly nodded and did as he was told before placing the two, chained to chairs, facing the gates of the seal.

As the copies of Minato and Kushina Namikaze awoke they heard a voice they didn't recognize ask

"Do you recognize them Kyuubi-Sama?"

Immediately they thought _"What? Kyuub-Sama? What the hell is going on? How did both of us come out of the seal at the same time?" _

The intimidating voice of the Kyuubi answered the boy.

"Yes Naruto. They are the fourth Hokage, who sealed me into you, and my previous host Kushina Uzumaki."

_"Naruto!? No this couldn't be Naruto. He didn't look right, and why would their son be calling this monster 'Kyuubi-Sama'?" _

The two tried to call out to him, but they found that they could not speak, they could not make a sound. The Kyuubi went on.

"I'm not surprised you don't recognize them, Kushina Uzumaki was never that famous and Minato Namikaze was only Hokage for a short time. From what I've seen the carving on the Hokage monument is a very poor likeness and there are not very many pictures of him around."

Naruto Hmmed in agreement, "Any suggestions on how we go about interrogating them?" Their son asked with no emotion in his voice.

"Just make sure that you only ask one person something at a time, and only let them give direct answers to direct questions. You wouldn't want them to try to stall, misdirect or confuse you."

They watched in horror as the world around them rippled for a second, adjusting to the change in the rules that Naruto had in place. Naruto turned to Minato

"What is your function within the seal?"

Minato tried to say something else, to ask him why, but he couldn't

"My purpose was to adjust the flow of youki into your chakra coils, to repair damage to the seal and to stop you from attempting to release the Kyuubi."

Naruto repeated the question to Kushina, she tried to resist, tried to make him get the information another way, tried to get him to let them talk freely

"I was placed so that when you eventually fought the Kyuubi for control of his power you could win."

The Kyuubi scoffed at this

"So Konoha finally decided that they wanted a Jinchuriki with total control over its demon. The hubris, the outrageous arrogance of it all. Or did they, that doesn't sound like something Sarutobi would do. Was thing something the two of you came up with? Does the council even know what you've done?"

Naruto looked at Minato

"Answer him."

"Yes Kushina and I came up with the idea ourselves, and no we didn't ask for the council's opinion."

"I see. For what reason did you increase the flow of youki into my coils?"

"To build up your chakra reserves so that you could survive controlling the Kyuubi's power."

"Were you aware that doing either of those things would lead to insanity, incompetence and death?"

Here both Kushina and Minato looked in shocked disbelief "No" _"Is this some lie the monstrous Kyuubi had told him, that we were sabotaging him? We were just trying to protect you Naruto, you will need more chakra if you are to bring peace to the world. Besides, who doesn't want more chakra?" _

"Forget it Naruto, their idiots. Find out how we can fix this fucked up seal." Said the Kyuubi

"How is the seal altered?"

Trying to give as little information as possible, Minato answered

"You need the key."

"And where is this key?"

"With the toad summons on Mount Myoboku." _"There. The only way that Naruto can get it is he signs the contract for the toads, and he can only get that from Jiraiya." _

"Naruto, he wouldn't have just given it to them, he would have places a special guard on it, for a project this important."

"Who specifically guards this key?"

"Gerotora. The Scroll Toad."

The Kyuubi drew Naruto's attention again "I know of them, they will place a scroll into their abdomen where it will stay until the clan's summoner dies."

"And what if the toad dies first?"

"…then the scroll would be up for grabs. What are you thinking?"

_"What? How could he possibly kill a toad? The summons live in a different dimension, even those that are brought over to this one by a summoner are almost never killed, since they dispel before that can happen." _Minato thought

"We simply inform the Chameleons that there is a major threat to their summoner in the hands of the Toad clan. Then we tell them what it is and who has it. They will send out a team of their best to assassinate Gerotora and steal the scroll. After that I'll commission Shiromari to investigate the key to rework our seal into something that will fit our deal better."

"I was thinking we would hunt down and torture Jiraiya till he gives it up, but your solution is much more elegant. Truly I chose well when I made you my avatar."

_"AVATAR! Just what has happened to our son? He must have been led astray by the Kyuubi. If the Kyuubi called him his avatar then Naruto's probably a nukenin by now, on the run for brutally murdering the council or something like that. He's probably a bloodthirsty killer who thrives on fear. We need to redeem him; but if we can't speak freely, and he won't ask, then we can't tell him our side of the story."_

In the midst of the two captive's mental panic, the Kyuubi instructed Naruto "Destroy them, but make sure no information gets transmitted when they dispel."

Naruto nodded, no emotion on his face, and ran Kushina through with a sword. Minato looked at her in horror before he dispelled, after being decapitated.

Naruto looked at where the two had just been. How had those morons ever gotten into positions of power? For a man who was supposedly a genius, the fourth Hokage had never even realized that the woman he was plotting with was deranged.

He could guess that the reason Kushina Uzumaki was well known was because of her _impressive_ title 'The Red Death'. Except that she earned that by being a schoolyard bully, mercilessly beating up other children during the academy. In fact, according to the Kyuubi, she had no real skills as a shinobi. Her only talent was the healing given by the Kyuubi's youki, and her chakra chains, and neither of those were offensive.

Now that he thought back on his history, the Namikaze was given the position of Hokage for winning the third shinobi world war. However, he did this by making Iwa Konoha's eternal enemy. He hadn't beaten Iwa, he'd humiliated them, and what was worse is that he'd never even realized it. Then Sarutobi had given him the position. Why? Because Minato was famous, feared, young, popular, and burned out. The problem was that Minato Namikaze should not have been rewarded for what he'd done. He permanently burned a bridge with Iwa, making every future conflict that much more dangerous. Win one battle, lose a hundred. That was the sort of behavior that _should _have gotten him removed from the shinobi ranks. It was thoughtless. It was borderline treason.

What were the other reasons that the fourth was hailed as a genius? His two original jutsu. Only one of them wasn't original, it was a modified version of a move created by the second Hokage. When he thought about it, the official version of the last battle of the third shinobi world war was obviously blown out of proportion. Kyuubi had told him that the entire Konoha force had all thrown the hiraishin markers while using the kunai kage bunshin technique, at the same time. And that it took Namikaze and a team of three guards to start the hiraishin technique itself. Tobirama's technique didn't need a marker and could be done just by himself.

And what about his other famous technique? The Rasengan. In the stories, he used the technique to kill his enemies, but in the propaganda pictures, the technique is always used against trees. Trees are strongly rooted against the ground and, while flexible, tear comparatively easily when force is used on the surface against the grain. On a person, unless he was help against something and couldn't move, the Rasengan would cause organ bruising, but other than that, would act like a bludgeoning technique.

Naruto felt disgusted at the thought of this man having run the village. This was who had been giving the orders? Naruto had heard shinobi loyal to the position of Hokage complain about how the council had too much power and how during Sarutobi's first reign it hadn't been that way. It made Naruto almost certain, it wasn't the Kyuubi's fault, it wasn't Sarutobi's fault, it was all the fault of this man. Minato Namikaze. He'd let the council take the reins, and then when he'd died they didn't give them back.

"It is fortunate for the village that those two are dead. I don't think we would have survived long with him as a leader."

"Best not to express that opinion where others can hear you, the fourth Hokage is considered a war hero and martyr. In my experience it takes about a century for someone like that to become open to criticism. Look at Hashirama Senju, when he died his will was inviolate, no one dared to say anything bad about him. Now you have academy students saying that allying with the Uchiha was a mistake, or that he shouldn't have sealed the other villages' bijuu for them."

Naruto nodded "I'm going to go put our plan into motion."

Once outside his mindscape Naruto wrote a message explaining the situation and what he wanted done about it. Then he summoned a small chameleon and told it to take the letter to Shiromari. That done, Naruto got up and went to see if Kurenai or Anko was about.

He saw his sister reading

"Oh, Naruto. I knocked on your door earlier but you must have been taking a nap."

"Meditating"

"Anyway, the Hokage wanted the two of us to meet him at his office."

Naruto thought about this for a moment. He hadn't met with the Hokage in private for two years, and he had just now become a genin. While it was always possible that the Hokage needed to inform him of some unknown variable, it was far more probable that he was going to inform Naruto that he was the host of the Kyuubi.

When Naruto and Kurenai got to the Hokage's office his suspicions were verified.

"Naruto, sit down. I have something to tell you."

Sitting in one of the chairs in front of the desk, he waited for Sarutobi to continue

"On the day you were born the Kyuubi no Kitsune attacked the village. The Fourth Hokage fought it and eventually defeated it. You know all this."

Naruto dutifully nodded

"But what you don't know is that the Fourth didn't kill the Kyuubi; couldn't kill the Kyuubi. So he did the only thing he could."

Sarutobi took a deep breath to prepare himself

"He sealed it into a new born infant… that infant was you Naruto."

The two stared at Naruto, expected outrage, denial, confusion, shock. But it was their turn to be shocked

"I know"

"What! What do you mean you know? For how long?"

"There has never been a time when I did not know. Did it never occur to you what the possible implications might be of being able to remember my time at ANBU HQ? For a time I was a common topic of conversation."

Sarutobi massaged his forehead in frustration, but it was Kurenai who asked the pertinent question

"Why did you never say anything? Or let on that you knew?"

"I was aware that it was a secret. I knew that people weren't supposed to know, I just didn't know that I wasn't supposed to know."

Sarutobi looked at Naruto. He knew that Naruto was cleaver, brilliant and secretive. There was no _way_ that he'd have known about a threat to his goals for the last seven years and not tried to act on it. What could he do to get Naruto to tell him? Was there even a way? Yes! There was, he'd thought of it not long ago, Naruto would do almost anything for the sake of his orders.

"Naruto I am ordering you to give me an accurate assessment of the Kyuubi according to your observations."

Sarutobi decided to keep it vague though, while he could force the information out, he didn't want be antagonistic either, and there were somethings he'd rather not know about.

Naruto nodded, and with a sigh started to brief him.

"The history and personal development of Kyuubi-Sama's development has important implications on his current assessment so I will begin there."

"Kyuubi-Sama! That monster killed out father. Why do you call it that?"

"Manners cost you nothing and can often open doors that threats of violence cannot."

Kurenai didn't seem pleased by this but Sarutobi gave the signal to continue

"The first thing to understand is that to supernatural creatures; such as summons, demons, probably gods, their reputation is one of their most valuable possessions. Before the Battle of the End Kyuubi-Sama had a reputation that he was quite proud of. He was known to be cunning, lethal, tricky and to seek after amusement. Then he was placed under a genjutsu by Madara Uchiha and used to fight against Hashirama Senju. This marked the beginning of the degradation to his reputation and the beginning of Konoha's demon hosts."

Sarutobi was fascinated, he was getting concrete information that he'd never heard before, about some of the most elusive and dangerous being in existence.

"The term we use is Jinchiriki."

"Yes, the 'power of human sacrifice'. However, that is an inappropriate term for Konoha's demon hosts since they were never used extensively in combat."

"You keep saying 'hosts' Narto-kun. Are you saying that there were more before you." This last was asked by a confused Kurenai.

"Yes. After Madara's defeat Kyuubi-Sama was then restrained by Mito Uzumaki, who having seen him fight only under the influence of a genjutsu, claimed that he was too destructive to be let alone and sealed him into herself."

Sarutobi nodded along with this, the slight deviations from accepted history made sense.

"The Uzumaki clan was quite famous, among other things, for their lack of emotional control. This is important to remember because, unknown to any at the time, Kyuubi-Sama's youki had negative effects on the brain. Being his host quite literally drove my predecessors mad."

"Explain!"

"Once the youki has penetrated the brain thoroughly it acts to aid whatever has priority at the time. Since my predecessors were both Uzumaki, it reduced their already poor impulse control and increased their emotional outbursts."

"What about you Naruto-Kun" asked a worried Kurenai

"I'm getting to that point. Mito believed that Kyuub-Sama could only be constrained through 'love'. However, this did not stop her from torturing him for the entire time he was sealed within her. She later taught her beliefs to Kushina Uzumaki who continued the practice until he was sealed into me."

"Are you saying that Mito was wrong?"

"I'm saying that she was delusional sir."

"Back to the story Naruto"

"During the attack Kyuub-Sama found himself unsealed, but before he could get away from the village he was again put under a genjutsu by an Uchiha, an Uchiha with one eye. Over a century of horrible hosts and two frontal assaults destroyed Kyuubi-Sama's reputation. So when he found himself sealed in me, and that his youki was affecting me differently because of my age, he decided to do something about it. He moderated the way that the youki was affecting my brain until I had achieved adult neural development, that way youki at the levels he radiated would no longer be able to negatively affect me."

"That was very informative. What's the bottom line? Is he a threat?"

Kurenai looked at the Hokage incredulously, he'd just asked if that _thing _was a threat to the village.

"No."

"WHAT? How can you say that Naruto-kun?"

"While Kyuubi-Sama dislikes Konoha, his feud is with the Uchiha and Uzumaki clans for the parts they played in ruining his reputation. If he were freed after my death, I believe that he would likely spend the next century making sure that those clans were stripped of their place in history and their names made into expletives and insults."

Sarutobi digested what he'd been told. A lot of the major points matched up, only the Kyuubi could have told him that. They'd always assumed that the Kyuubi was almost mindless, Mito had backed up that claim with her assertion that it was just a ball of hate and destruction. People couldn't be held accountable for their actions when under genjutsu, and Sarutobi knew that the sharingan had many levels. He looked at Naruto. He doubted Naruto would care about whether or not the Kyuubi was lying about some of the things it had told him, so long as it made itself useful and any problems that arose did so after his death.

The problem was, it made a disturbing amount of sense, even the first part. While there wasn't much history recorded from the clan wars period, they would have made mention of a giant rampaging demon fox, that there wasn't any gave enormous credence to Naruto's story.

"I am prepared to believe you Naruto. But you must keep the truth a secret from all but your family, or those that I, or my successor, choose to let in on this."

"Of course Hokage-Sama."

When they walked home Kurenai had been deep in thought. When they got there she sat down and poured two glasses of saki

"You really trust the Kyuubi?"

"Trust? No."

She quirked an eyebrow at him

"You just argued to the Hokage that Kyuubi wasn't a threat. Why the change of heart?"

"He has no interest in Konoha; he does have an interest in me. Make no mistake, he does not feel sorry for killing those people in the attack, he knows he is responsible for the death of father and he has never, in all the years I've known him, apologized. Beyond that, he will do anything to make sure that I am not a disappointment, that I don't further ruin his reputation."

"I see."

"Actually you don't Kurenai. It was he who manipulated me into breaking the seal on my appearance; he made it so that I didn't even know what I had done. It was also he that, when you wanted to take me in, closed off any other option but to go with you."

Kurenai was stunned

"Why would the Kyuubi do that?"

"He had come to the same conclusion as everyone else, I needed somebody to help ground me. He didn't care who, but my emotional stability was important to his plans, so he made it that you were my only option." When he saw her conflicted look he added "A decision I have never regretted."

"Thank you Naruto." So composed herself "So the reason that you don't trust him is that he is an unfeeling manipulator?"

"In essence. But we having a 'working relationship' so I don't need to trust him very far."

Kurenai could understand that, it was the way that a lot of partnerships and teams worked in the shinobi world.

"How is your training going?"

"Namiashi-Sensei is focusing on my sword work; he seems to be trying to teach me some of his style. His blade seems extremely interesting; I'm going to ask him if there are restrictions on who can get ones made like his, if unique weapons have similar laws as clan techniques then it would be impossible."

"From what you've told me, a sword like that would be very expensive."

"Probably. I will most likely find out how much it will cost and then find a way to make the money."

"What about Kisuke?"

"He's been focusing on tactics and using your resources efficiently; the use of tactics and combat styles to conserve chakra and outmaneuver your opponent."

**AN: This is the last chapter I have written. I actually haven't typed much at all for the last month. Not sure when I'll write more. **

**I tried to list all of the reasons for D ranks I have ever read. There are quite a few explanations. **

**FYI hubris means 'outrageous arrogance', it's truest use is for when people act as though they are above human limits and morals. Trying to take Kurama's power and make it a weapon of their village would qualify, hands down. **

**I find it odd that I have never heard anybody else accuse Minato of being the cause of the council. And yes, I really do think all those nasty things about Kushina and Namikaze. Did you know that if you look up Kushina's wiki page it shows zero known skills. In fics she's almost always listed as a kenjutsu and fuinjustu mistress, but there is absolutely no evidence for that, just like there is no evidence that chakra chains work on anything but youki. I mean she has the youki suppression bloodline, but so does Yamato and his method doesn't stop regular chakra, so those vaunted chains are totally useless unless you're going full bijuu. **

**Names have been made into expletives before. Crap comes from Crapper, the name of one of the earliest toilet makers. There used to be an insult 'your name is Mudd' referring to one of the Lincoln assassination conspirators Samuel Mudd. **


End file.
